Growing up on the Northside of Syracuse, Grant Blvd. was the gateway to the city for my friends and I. We rode bikes down to the cemetery or over to an ice cream shop, went out to eat at the Corner House or went down to a Chiefs game. Everything we needed was somewhere down Grant.
Slowly some of those businesses went away. The Corner House closed up shop after years of service, the old arcade (which I never personally experienced) had been vacant for decades, shops changed hands and went in-and-out of business, but the street remains a focal point on the Northside.
This is why my mind continually comes back to ways to improve this street, which will be the focus of these posts. Taking back the abandoned buildings, restructuring the street, and making a neighborhood you never want to leave.
The Northsider
When I think of my neighborhood the first thing I think of is the Corner House, a family friendly restaurant that thrived for decades. Families walked down to eat on the weekends, the smell of food would fill the air, it was the heart of the neighborhood in a lot of ways.
Now its abandoned frame stands there with broken windows and a shoddy paint job covering up graffiti. It doesn't always feel safe to walk through its parking lot knowing you're blocked from the street light. An upscale restaurant tried to set up there a couple years after the Corner House closed up, but it was never the right fit for the area; its faded curtains still hanging in the front windows and its sign spray painted over.
That building is a defining piece of the neighborhood that needs to be revived. And that's where the idea for the Northsider has sprung up from.
As I contemplated what would be an ideal fit for the neighborhood, I started to look at what was already offered just west down the street. Peppino's offers up some of the best pizza in the city, Change of Pace is a neighborhood bar with wings and fried food that people love, and you've got Leihs and Steigerwald as one of the best deli's in the area. These institutions already anchor this street and compliment each other. The new Corner House should build on these successes.
The Northsider, as I've come to call the idea, would be a bar and sandwich shop, infusing the different flavors from the cultures that populate the Northside. As a neighborhood, the Northside has experienced a tremendous amount of immigration; from the Germans and Italians over a hundred years ago to the Burmese and Sudanese families currently filling the community. All of these cultures have distinct flavors and dishes that would be remixed together to create a unique cuisine of its own. As the only sandwich shop, New York Roast, closed down years ago, there's been a want to fill that casual dining experience, but in a way that hasn't been done before in this area.
Along with the sandwiches would be a unique beer selection to the area. The bars along Grant Blvd. have always been focused on staple beers like Budweiser, Coors, and Blue Moon. Not that I wouldn't want those beers available, I think it'd be smart to focus on more locally produced beer and some drinks from the countries represented in the neighborhood. This would allow the Northsider to distinguish itself from the other neighborhood bars as well as compliment them. Like Tipperary Hill and Downtown Syracuse, you need a variety of bar atmospheres for people to bounce between to create a social scene.
Another important aspect of this would be to open it up to the community. Currently the Corner House has a small parking lot wrapping around its exterior. In order to truly reinvent the space and draw the community in I would look to remove the half of the parking lot that is closest to Grant Blvd.. In its place would be a courtyard feature that the restaurant would open up to, much like what was down at Now & Later on Tipperary Hill. This would allow the sounds and smells of the restaurant to waft through the neighborhood and draw people in. Fun murals could be painted on the exterior cinderblock wall, adding to the vibrancy of the place.
One of the critiques of the current zoning laws in Syracuse, and the newly proposed changes, that I have is parking minimums. Requiring businesses to have off-street parking not only increases costs for the business, but also deprives neighborhoods from developing walkable business districts that people are drawn to. If the City Council speaks up enough and removes these parking requirements, it would allow for a space like this courtyard to exist.
This is just one idea for that space, but its an idea that invites the involvement of the neighborhood. There's vibrancy in the community and there needs to be more spaces for neighbors to come together. The Northsider, or something like it, could be that place. The future of the Northside begins at the Corner House.