Friday, September 05, 2014

Great Idea in Rome . . .

They are breaking ground for 128 luxury apartments in Rome.  Fantastic!  For too long high-end construction has been left to suburban areas.

It's good to see that some of this is going on in Utica, too, with the Pezzolanella's project at the re-christened Landmarc building.  It certainly is exciting to see those steel beams flying through the air! And the County seems to be on the right track, too, by creating incentives for in-city projects.

We all benefit from in-city projects because they more-intensely use the valuable infrastructure already in place: the roads, sewers, and water lines which were originally designed for intense use.  This avoids taxpayers having to build and maintain new infrastructure.  But more needs to be done.

One of the biggest flaws in the Utica Master Plan is its emphasis on "affordable housing" (a/k/a public or publicly subsidized housing) with total ignorance of high-end development. One gets the impression that the Plan was consciously designed to concentrate the region's poor in Utica.  The Plan defers to the Federal HUD ideas of social engineering rather than what Utica really needs:  a shot of taxpayers who can pay to keep the city running.

Utica leaders . . . wake up!  By fixing the Plan to encourage people with money to come to town, other problems will solve themselves.

 

3 comments:

Keith said...

The Bucks are not stupid and have experience in both construction and apartment management. We have to assume they have reason to believe there is a need for rentals in this range. To me the biggest problem marketing upscale housing in either Rome or Utica are the school districts. Locals may think crime is a big negative but compared to many areas it's not that bad.

However most people will look at Procter and conclude they don't want to put their kids in a failing school. If they come from a market with $250,000 fixer uppers, they will look at what $250,000 can buy in New Hartford and decide that's where they will educate their kids.

Anonymous said...

Utica leaders should never have taken down Washington Courts. As a result of this action, the hoodrats & welfare queens who were holed up in W.C. had to find housing. So the aforementioned moved to East & West Utica & turned both sections of the city into hellholes by dealing rock, robbing innocent citizens, killings due to the drug trade & other crimes which blacks specialize in. Not too mention bringing rodents, & bedbug &roach infestations into once clean areas.
Rebuild W.C., move the hoodrats & welfare queens back to where they belong. That way humans will not have to be exposed to animals selling rock & committing other crimes.

Anonymous said...

Picenti keeps perpetuating the myth of nano tech as an economic transformational effort. It is not. Even the most optimistic projections project a job growth of 1500 over 5 years. What will be produced actually? No one knows. Then factor in the billions of taxpayer dollars being spent. Picenti cannot learn the lesson that government cannot generate job growth. But, he'll be retired somewhere else on our dime before the voter wakes up.