Five Teams Shortlisted in Syracuse's "Movement on Main" Competition

Five design teams have been named to receive $15,000 grants to revitalize Syracuse's Near Westside neighborhood as part of the "Movement on Main: Designing the Healthy Main Street" competition. The initiative, sponsored by Syracuse University, plans to redesign the area around Wyoming Street to once again make it an important agent of the community's social and recreational life.

Three teams were chosen from the submissions in the first round of the competition:

• Coen + Partners, Inc. (Minneapolis, MN)
• Stoss Landscape Urbanism (Boston, MA) with Höweler + Yoon Architecture, LLP, Nitsch Engineering, Inc., and Dr. Angie Cradock, Sc. D.
• King and King Architects (Syracuse, NY) with Urban Movement Design and The Alchemical Nursery

Two teams had previously been invited as preselected participants:

• Marpillero Pollak Architects (New York, NY) with Arup, Consulting Engineers, Nelson Byrd Woltz Landscape Architects, and HealthxDesign
• peg office of landscape + architecture (Philadelphia, PA) with Sp(a)de Architecture and Barton & Loguidice, P.C. Engineering

From the competition brief: "Wyoming Street is located within Syracuse’s Westside, one of the first residential neighborhoods in the city. Through the efforts of the Near Westside Initiative (NWSI), a non-profit community development corporation, this neighborhood is being transformed from one of the most impoverished neighborhoods in the region into a thriving creative, healthy, mixed income community.  The NWSI’s mission is to combine the power of art, green technology and innovation with neighborhood values and culture to revitalize the neighborhood now known as the SALT district.

Syracuse University provided the leadership and $10 million in seed funding to get the project off the ground. To date 52 faculty from 5 Colleges and over 1000 students have been directly engaged in the neighborhood’s revitalization.  Home Headquarters, Syracuse’s Neighborworks Corporation, works to revitalize the housing stock and increase home ownership in the SALT District. The Syracuse COE focuses on the district as a test bed for green technologies. The Syracuse University School of Architecture’s UPSTATE: Center for Design, Research and Real-estate provides neighborhood planning and design services.  The Gifford Foundation, a small private charitable trust, has been instrumental in ensuring proper community engagement and resident ownership of this revitalization process. Lastly, the SU office of Community Engagement and Economic Development manages the overall Near Westside Initiative with its vice president acting as the NWSI board president and employing the executive director."

The jury is composed of:

• Alvenas Bell (Near Westside Resident)
• Jennifer Colacicco (Rich & Gardner Construction Company)
• Thomas Dennison (Professor of Practice, Public Administration and International Affairs; Director, Program in Health Services Management and Policy, Maxwell School of Syracuse University)
• Marilyn Higgins (Vice President, Community Engagement & Economic Development, Syracuse University)
• Maarten Jacobs (Director, The Near Westside Initiative, Syracuse University)
• Brian Lonsway (Associate Professor, Syracuse University School of Architecture)
• Paul Nojaim (Chair, Near Westside Initiative)
• Marc Norman (Director, UPSTATE: A Center for Design, Research, and Real Estate, Syracuse University School of Architecture)
• Andrew Maxwell (Director of Planning and Sustainability, City of Syracuse)
• Matthew Millea (Deputy County Executive for Physical Services, Onondaga County)
• Jeffrey Pauline (Assistant Professor, Syracuse University, David B. Falk College of Sport and Human Dynamics)
• Richard Weller (Winthrop Professor of Landscape Architecture, Director of the Australian Urban Design Research Centre, University of Western Australia)