Governor allocates $10 million to help build Syracuse’s ‘New 15th Ward’

SYRACUSE, N.Y. (WSYR-TV) — Governor Kathy Hochul’s spending plan for the next budget year includes $10 million to fund the first phases of a local project to renovate public housing in Syracuse.

Governor Hochul made the announcement Monday, February 6 while visiting Syracuse to highlight the local impacts of her budget and tour the neighborhood her allocation will benefit.

“Let’s look at places like the ‘New 15th Ward’ public housing,” said Governor Hochul in her opening.

Competing with a round of applause, she continued: “How about $10 million dollars? This is going to be gorgeous.”

“A once thriving neighborhood divided by a highway,” said the Governor, “…now it’s time to reconnect. Bring people back home. Bring back the beauty and the grandeur of the neighborhood that has so radically changed. And now we’re going to start fixing the wrongs of the past.”

Separate from the State DOT’s plan to take down the nearby I-81 viaduct, the City of Syracuse and Syracuse Housing Authority have already partnered to renovate public housing complexes.

Speaking about the finances, Syracuse Mayor Ben Walsh told NewsChannel 9, “There was a gap that was identified. I went to the governor. She immediately understood it, and in the budget, has delivered the funding to get the first three phases off the ground.”

Construction begins this year on the McKinney Manor section and continues into other housing projects including “Pioneer Homes” and “Central Village” in the years to come.

Mayor Walsh says all 800 units of public housing will be replaced. In addition, the project adds 400 homes for mixed-income tenants.

The new housing stock will help the City of Syracuse meet the state’s new requirement that municipalities increase housing stock. Statewide, Governor Hochul wants to add 800,000 units in ten years, requiring towns and cities in Upstate New York to grow 1 percent of home supply in the next three years.

Her requirement was partly incentivized by Micron’s commitment to bring 50,000 new jobs to the region.

“What we’re working on here has served as a model for the state in terms of what other communities should be doing,” said Mayor Walsh. “We’re preserving public housing, creating new mixed-income housing, so what the governor is already proposing as a state-wide housing plan, we’re already ahead of the game in that regard.”