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March 12, 2006

I see steel

If you leave the Carousel Center mall via Hiawatha Boulevard, you'll see, across the street, a big pile of steel girders. There are signs on the girders: "Some people see steel. We see jobs." Then, there's the Destiny USA logo.

I wrote Wednesday that this project is bad for Syracuse, and if its developer, Bob Congel (who heads the Pyramid Cos.), wants to really help the city, the mall should be back on the tax rolls, which would put an instant $12 million a year infusion of cash into the coffers.

On Thursday, though, State Supreme Court Justice John Centra decided that the Destiny USA project should go forward, beginning with an 800,000-square foot expansion (read the PDF decision here).

For those of you who are like me -- rather spacially impaired -- picture one of those enormous grocery stores with 25 checkouts, a restaurant, videos and a little bit of bulk stock. Now imagine six of them, all attached. That's the expansion. The mall itself already has a CompUSA, Circuit City, Best Buy, Lord & Taylor, Kaufman's (which will be Macy's), JC Penney, Old Navy, DSW and 19-screen cinemaplex, as well as the Pyramid Co's national offices. And a whole bunch of other stores and restaurants and such. Those are just the big ones.

What the heck are they going to put in 800,000 square feet of leasable space? Car dealerships? The Rose Bowl II?

Centra wrote in his decision that this is without a doubt a public project. But if you look at Destiny's site, this is such a private project that no matter what comes into the project (which will be much bigger, by the way, than the current mall and this initial expansion), Destiny will own it, but license it out, and Destiny will do the hiring and training.

Destiny claims it will be the largest tourist destination on earth. More people than Disney World. And all in Syracuse.

The benefit, supposedly, is that bringing all those tourists to Syracuse will mean they will spend money locally. But Destiny is designed so that people don't need to leave Destiny. Shopping. Hotels. Restaurants. There may even be sports. Convention centers. And I imagine hourly shuttles to Hancock Airport.

Destiny will employ however many thousands of people, most at minimum wage. They will not need to leave work to get everything they need. No one will go downtown for dinner or music. They'll leave work, head halfway across Destiny to have dinner, then settle in at a Destiny bar for live music. If they're too impaired to get home (or the many miles back to their cars), they'll use their employee discounts to stay in Destiny hotels.

Destiny, of course, is off the tax rolls for at least 30 years. The city and county will see an influx of money from the sales tax, but what are they going to do with it? Destiny and the city will be the only major employers left. Restaurants will close, unable to keep up with those within the Destiny complex. The convention hotel we finally got funding for? Gone, unable to keep up with hotels at Destiny. The SkyChiefs? The Crunch? They'll either move to Destiny or leave town.

Tomorrow, Destiny will mail this letter to area residents, seeking their support for the project. Not for the 29 businesses in Salina that will be forced to close (including the one that in the 1920s invented the foot measuring device still used in shoe stores around the world). Not for the thousands of people who will have to move when the city takes their homes at less than market value by eminent domain to hand them over for private development.

And then there's the unthinkable: What if this gets built, and then fails? What would we do with all the crap that's built and not used? Destiny's letter and web site say the risk is all Destiny's -- but with everything else shut down by this thing, all our development eggs would be in one basket. If it doesn't happen, there's no turning back, nowhere to go.

This is the wrong project in the wrong place. There is never a right time for it.

Posted by josh at March 12, 2006 09:41 AM

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