A significant legal hurdle to ripping down the interstate 81 viaduct through Syracuse, Recent York, and replacing it with an urban boulevard was cleared Friday when a Recent York court overturned a ruling blocking the project.
The one legal route now for Renew 81, a gaggle opposing the “latest urbanism” project, can be to hunt relief from the Recent York Court of Appeals, the very best within the state.
In a unanimous decision, a five-judge panel overturned a lower court decision that a brand new environmental impact statement was needed for the project, as a result of the planned construction of a semiconductor manufacturing plant in Syracuse.
Friday’s decision was handed down by the Appellate Division, Fourth Judicial Department of the Recent York Supreme Court. The Supreme Court in Recent York just isn’t the very best within the state; the Court of Appeals is.
State agencies in command of the project, the Supreme Court decision said, “complied with the substantive obligations under the State Environmental Quality Review Act inasmuch as they took the requisite ‘hard look’ on the relative environmental aspects.”
The court also said an environmental impact statement for the I-81 project based on the development of the semiconductor plant was not needed.
An Onondaga County legislator, Charles Garland, who’s a member of Renew 81, was quoted by Syracuse.com as saying the group would likely appeal. “We feel that the facts are very clear, and that the Court of Appeals will definitely agree” with the lower court decision requiring an environmental review.
In that very same article, Syracuse Mayor Ben Walsh said of a possible appeal: “What’s the purpose? Their strategy from day one has been delay, delay, delay.”
Recent York Gov. Kathy Hochul, a backer of the project, praised the choice on X.
The project would demolish a viaduct that sends I-81 traffic through the center of Syracuse. As an alternative, I-81 northbound and southbound traffic can be routed onto what’s now Interstate 481, which loops around the town’s east side.
The viaduct is 1.4 miles long and needed significant repairs no matter what policy the town pursued. The state, on an online page concerning the project, said your entire corridor is 12 miles.
Renew 81 has estimated that diversion around the town could add 8 to 22 miles to any trip.
Instead of Interstate 81 in the town can be a grade-level highway and boulevard. There can be red lights along its way, but those are mostly toward the center of the road, with the more free-flowing boulevard north and south of that center, which is a traffic circle.
Syracuse.com also reported that work has been done near the 2 ends of the right-of-way where Interstates 81 and 481 come together north and south of the town. Contracts for that work were awarded last August, in accordance with Construction Dive.
The Congress for Recent Urbanism (CNU) has been a backer of comparable highway-to-boulevard projects, however the one in Syracuse can be amongst the biggest. The “Big Dig” in Boston, replacing the town’s Central Artery of Interstate 93 with a tunnel, was one of the crucial distinguished Recent Urbanism projects.
On its web page, it said of the Syracuse plans: “The development of Interstate 81 in Syracuse got here with the forced displacement of nearly 1,300 residents from the town’s fifteenth Ward. It devastated a historic black community, severing the social fabric of the community and razing swaths of buildings, and with them, reasonably priced housing options. Neighborhood deterioration, a glut of surface parking lots, and citywide population loss followed.”
Efforts on what the CNU called the “I-81 Challenge” return so far as 2012.
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