SU leadership, local officials discuss implications of I-81 transformation
Get the latest Syracuse news delivered right to your inbox.
Subscribe to our newsletter here.
Syracuse University’s Democratizing Knowledge Project hosted a community forum Wednesday morning to address the implications for surrounding communities of dismantling portions of Interstate 81.
The discussion, titled “Community Power & Campus Engagement: A Dialogue about I-81,” featured nine panelists including SU administrators, Syracuse community advocates and I-81 project directors.
Approximately 70 attendees joined in person and on Zoom to hear the panelists discuss the long-standing racial inequities and environmental disparities caused by I-81. The panelists encouraged greater collaboration between SU and the wider Syracuse community to successfully deal with the highway’s legacy.
Panelist Oceanna Fair represented Families for Lead Freedom, a group founded in 2019 that advocates to mitigate the city of Syracuse’s ongoing lead crisis. Decades later, the impacts of the I-81 highway project can still be felt through high poverty rates and lead levels amongst Syracuse’s Black residents, Fair said.
“For many families who have grown up just under this bridge on the South Side in the shadow of the university, this project is going to be a big deal for us,” Fair said. “This highway caused harm for us when it was built. It destroyed a whole community.”
In 2019, the New York State Department of Transportation approved the community grid as part of the I-81 viaduct project, which aims to reverse the harm caused by its creation in the 1960s.
I-81 physically divided the predominantly-Black community in Syracuse’s South Side neighborhood from the east side of the city. The federal project led to generational economic setbacks for many Black residents.
Both panelists and attendees agreed the community grid’s construction and ramifications should revolve around the future generation of Syracuse residents. Several attendees, such as Undergraduate Coordinator for SU’s College of Arts and Sciences Keely Calf Robe, emphasized the project’s potential long-term benefits.
Constructing the community grid can provide opportunities for the city’s young population to learn alongside professionals working on the project, said Calf Robe, a member of the Onondaga Nation.
“It would be really cool to have these young men or young women go and job shadow or intern on this project so they could learn different aspects of what goes into building a highway… and then say, ‘this is what you can do with that degree if you go get the degree,’” she said.
Mary Grace Almandrez, SU’s vice president for diversity and inclusion, raised a similar point during the panel, emphasizing that access remains a top concern for her given the scale of the community grid project. SU will look to further collaborate with the city community and local advocates as residents previously expressed concern over more efforts to gentrify and displace communities.
“I’m invested in the success of our young people and invested in the success of those who live in the surrounding areas,” Almandrez said. “This is work we do together to uplift our communities and I don’t see separation between university and the wider community. We have a greater responsibility to blur those lines.”
Environmental concerns were another key element of the discussion. Two residents from the Syracuse South Side neighborhood asked panelists how they would address issues like maintaining air quality in communities near where the community grid will be built.
Betsy Parmley, I-81 viaduct project director for NYSDOT, responded to the concerns and said planned construction methods will aim to minimize dust levels.
“The way we’re going to take down the viaduct is different than you would see it normally out of a very rural area,” Parmley said. “We’ll just cut it and remove it and tuck it away, we’re not going to be jackhammering it, which creates the dust.”
In April 2022, the NYSDOT and the Federal Highway Administration released a final environmental impact statement confirming the community grid option balances consideration of the “need for safe and efficient transportation” and the “social, economic and environmental effects of the Project,” according to the statement.
The I-81 community grid costs a total of $2.25 billion and needs six years to be completed, Parmley said. The state won’t start on the community grid until at least 2026, she said.
Fair said outreach to the city of Syracuse’s youth in neighborhoods like South Side has the potential to create a generational impact before construction on the grid starts.
“If we get those interventions early, we can change those children’s trajectory,” Fair said. “We can get them into these programs, we can get them into these hands-on jobs and change your entire life, but that comes from us getting in early, making those interventions and showing them that we care.”
