The depth and breadth of social capital that exists in Utica, New York is astonishing. When down-staters and policy makers generally think about the string of industrial cities along the New York Throughway from Albany to Buffalo they/we envision hopeless, dark, hollowed-out downtowns and empty factory buildings. Because of the wealth generated in Utica from the late 19^th Century to the mid-20^th Century it has the cultural and social resources to meet the needs of a city of more than twice its size. Utica has an impressive collection of downtown commercial and civic structures by major New York architects (including Carrère and Hastings, Thomas Lamb and Richard Upjohn). The town has a City Beautiful era, 600-acre park system, that is way more than a city of 60,000 people could ever use, or even properly maintain. It also has an actively used, well equipped, professionally run public library. Utica boasts one of the country’s most recognized art museums, the Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute, in a Phillip Johnson designed building. Like so many American communities that had periods of great economic expansion during the industrial age, among Utica’s legacy institutions is a significant community foundation. Utica’s has assets of around $150 million. The city also is situated in the Mohawk Valley, an area generally under-recognized for its incredible scenic beauty, and which is only minutes away from the foothills of the Adirondacks and their vast recreational opportunities.

            Unlike the big city downtowns of the early 90’s, which faced public safety challenges as a first order of business, Genesee Street, Utica’s main thoroughfare, does not feel unsafe either during the day or night. The principal issue facing those engaged in promoting economic development in Utica isn’t improving the perception of public safety in town. This is a major difference with the revitalization efforts of the past. Utica’s challenge, instead, is activating its public spaces in order to draw new residents and increase its population so as to right-size it for its substantial social resources, as well as its tax base to support them, given that its current residents are about half how many there were at its maximum population in 1930. Many older city residents romanticize the past of Utica’s “glory days,” which, demographically were the 1930s – 1960s, and it probably was a very comfortable, satisfying place to live – if you were an able-bodied, white, adult male. I would conjecture that the extent of this small city’s park system is at least partially result of the low wages (in early 20^th century dollars) paid to park maintenance and horticultural workers – making the system inexpensive to operate given the city’s size and tax base at the time. While economic inequality is, perhaps, our most pressing political issue today, what is socially acceptable with respect to the exploitation of low skill and unskilled workers in 2019 is substantially different than at the time these parks first needed to be taken care of. Providing the level of care and finish that was exercised in Utica’s parks in the 1920’s and 30’s is simply economically impossible, given what’s now required to adequately compensate field staff.

A nice block on Genesee

     Utica, and its suburbs today have a more diverse population than in the past – with a significant influx of Bosnian immigrants in recent decades. Those immigrants have started businesses and fixed up homes. One quarter of Utica’s population is foreign born, with over 8,000 of those individuals having Bosnian roots. 60% of the population is under age 50. All of these factors are ingredients for a dynamic future; offering the potential for a high quality of life, in a striking natural environment, rich in water resources (an important asset in a changing global climate), with high quality, low cost vernacular architectural resources and outstanding regional medical and higher educational institutions.

            But the present includes a downtown without street life and vast underutilized, inadequately maintained and insufficiently programmed parks. The question is how to activate those public spaces – particularly in order to draw recent college graduates into the city to populate the downtown, generate new economic activity and put capital into the city’s high quality, but disinvested, residential and commercial real estate (while in town I was hosted for dinner at a beautifully restored, historic home near downtown). I suggest that Utica needs to focus on creating a critical mass of activity on Genesee Avenue and in F.T. Proctor Park, which is a manageable size and has great potential for increased activity. Spreading revitalization efforts too broadly – both geographically and in terms of time – tends to prevent the creation of secondary effects and limit the impact of programmed activity. Focusing on generating visible activity on one or two central blocks downtown or in a single, visible park area, is essential to long-term success or any revitalization efforts. Visible aggregations of people tends to draw additional people, and activity that has reached a certain level of critical mass expands and self-generates more activity. 

            While there are several bars and restaurants on Genesee Street, some even with outdoor seating, there needs to be much more of that seating and those restaurants should utilize space heaters to expand their season (perhaps the City or the Community Foundation might stimulate the use of outdoor space heaters, which are ubiquitous now from southern California to ski resorts, by buying a few and “loaning” them to one or two places to demonstrate that they work and draw a crowd). The front of the library (absent its current over-sized hedges) and the and the Munson-Williams-Procter (essentially across the street from each other), would also be a great place for movable chairs and tables, free wi-fi and space heaters. More ground floor, active uses need to be drawn to the buildings on downtown blocks. This is true even if that space has to be given away at the outset – perhaps in exchange for improvements to fixtures and systems. Active non-income generating space is infinitely better than empty, tenant-less space. Lively first floor space visibly demonstrates to potential paying tenants the possibility of drawing customers to that location (who often have difficulty envisioning activity where there presently isn’t any).

 The block where the hospital center is being developed.

     A current civic controversy in Utica involves the consolidation of local hospitals into a single downtown facility, which could create an economic tipping point for the downtown – drawing doctors and other medical professionals to live and work there. The controversy arises out of the proposed demolition of several attractive existing structures (as well as tearing down some less distinguished other buildings). The impact of that demolition might be compensated for by creating active uses on the lower floors and adjacent sidewalks of the medical center development – reserving as much of the first 40 or 50 feet of ground floor space of any new development for active commercial uses like food and beverage service, medical and “pamper” related services (spa, haircutting, beauty products) – and, perhaps, creating vibrant new public spces. Given the likely economic strength of the medical center operator, those spaces could be let initially for nominal rents in order to attract new businesses and test and learn from the market. What has to be avoided in the proposed medical center development is the usual “super-block” urban medical center design of extensive blank walls of glass and steel with a limited number of entrances – creating long dead zones at the base of the facilities. Hospital architects and clients have to be encouraged to do more than pay lip service to being part of, and in fact, rebuilding the urban fabric where possible. A conventional super-block development will almost certainly be more of a detriment than an asset to the downtown, despite whatever operational “efficiencies” are produced by the hospital consolidation if its ground floors haven’t been properly designed. Perhaps several of the more interesting existing buildings might be adaptively reused as part of the project, or at least their facades preserved. Any architect can design a conventional downtown hospital fortress. A truly great, thoughtful design will produce an animated street life that contributes to the downtown’s revitalization. 

            At F.T. Proctor Park the usual temptations of capital spending and chemical intensive, limited season horticulture are to be avoided. Frequently scheduled, popular programming in a defined area is what’s required for drawing more people to the space. While there is some talk of building a pavilion in the park, bringing water, gas and sewer service to that structure will be time consuming and expensive. My experience is that stand-alone food kiosks struggle to make a profit under the best conditions. Something more flexible that requires less capital investment is what’s called for in Proctor. Bringing food trucks to the parking lot on Saturdays and Sundays might generate consistent activity – especially if the food offerings draw on the area’s Italian and Bosnian food stores and restaurants; perhaps from businesses that have established local brands. Similarly, dance and music festivals that celebrate residents’ ethnic heritage might encourage those communities to take more advantage of F.T. Proctor. Events and concessions should be managed to provide license fee revenue to ultimately support park operations if they prove to be economically viable.

            Restroom facilities are expensive to install and difficult to maintain (I would like to understand why people are so abusive of public toilet facilities. Even my Brooklyn office building’s men’s room generally has its floor littered with paper towels). Bryant Park spends serious six figure money cleaning and securing its flagship restroom. Temporary toilet trailers (and there are actually some rather nice ones) make much more sense to support events and concessions, at least while building a constituency for the parks. New “comfort stations” require at least hundreds of thousands of dollars to build from the ground up (trust me on this one) and must have full time staff assigned to them if they are going to an asset to the park.  

F.T. Proctor Park — a focus of Central New York Parks Conservancy’s restoration efforts

       Volunteer programs, beyond the annual clean-up that some conservancies do, are a way to bring people in the park and engage them and their communities. In Riverside Park in Manhattan, volunteers are given plots of land to plant and take care of (they are called “park tenders” http://riversideparknyc.org/individual/). This program has been highly successful. Those volunteers have a real stake in the park’s success and can become the backbone of an annual membership program. And they are a regular, visible presence – drawing others into the park. They should be, at least initially, allowed to “do their own thing” with their plots – to increase their sense of ownership. Unlike relatively passive, once a year cleanup crews, active horticultural volunteers will likely be enthusiastic park supports. Some effort needs to go towards securing the email addresses of as many as possible of both those who use the parks and those who live near them, so that they can be solicited as annual fund donors and volunteers – a group whose ranks should be continuously expanding. Those individuals should make up the cadre who are principally responsible for maintenance and programming of the parks, and who can become an effective lobbying force for more city dollars for the Parks Department. 

            Getting people to think differently about what’s possible in a city with an impressive history is a tall order. Everyone is made uncomfortable by change and prefers what they know. This is especially true if change involves drawing new people downtown and into public spaces. At the same time, downtown redevelopers can’t force the market to go where people aren’t interested in having it go. If commercial office tenants don’t have an economic reason to be downtown, you can’t get them to rent space there. But we can nudge the market in the right directions by supporting positive activity when it starts to sprout and by creating small scale examples of what might draw positive activity, grow and take on lives of their own. Finding active uses for empty downtown space, encouraging more activity to spill out onto the sidewalks, especially at night, and drawing folks into the parks with food and other activities are all means of creating activity and drawing a critical mass of active space users. The great architecture and those strong social and cultural institutions of Utica aren’t going to lie fallow forever. It’s simply a matter of nudging the process of renewal to go a little faster, with more short-term quality of life benefits for current city and nearby suburban residents.