VISIONARY

VISIONARY 1

My Motto: NOTHING IS IMPOSSIBLE

When Dewitt Clinton asked Thomas Jefferson if the federal government would help finance his bold project to build what he was calling the Erie Canal from Albany to what is now Buffalo, Jefferson said, “That’s impossible. You could never build that.”

Some of My Projects:

• Salina Street Mall

• Father of the Onondaga Lake Trail

• GreeningUSA, Inc

• Onondaga County Renewable Energy Authority

• How to Redensify the City (Copy and paste into your browser. To get full screen hover over “more.” Some slides are slow. Be patient.)

• 20 Fantastic Ideas for Syracuse and CNY

• A Greater Syracuse

• Executive Charrettes – A way for communities to leap forward into the future

• A Penny - A national program to invest in our renewable  energy future

• Convert Shoppingtown into a Walkable Community

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A PENNY

A program to transition the country to our new Renewable Energy Systems and to slow dangerous global warming.

APENNY Executive Summary

See APENNY Page for  complete details (website apenny.org coming soon).

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David C Ashley 3.6.2013

A GREATER SYRACUSE

Lets Reinvent Ourselves Into a City of a Half a Million People(published 7-18-2012 in the Post Standard)

The time is ripe for our community leaders to get together and make some important changes. We are at a critical state in our history and the status quo is dooming us to failure if we do not act. Here is an important possibility to consider. The city of Syracuse, the Common Council with the blessing of Mayor Miner, should vote to unincorporated the city of Syracuse in the year 2020 which in effect would turn over all its rights and responsibilities to Onondaga County. And then, in order to retain the name Syracuse if for no other reason, ONONDAGA COUNTY SHOULD, IN THE YEAR 2020, REINCORPORATE AS THE CITY OF SYRACUSE with a population of 467,026 people and a metro area population, including Madison, Oswego, Cortland and Cayuga Counties, of 794,000 people.

• Why? The city of Syracuse is a basket case. This week Mayor Miner announced that in three years the city would be totally broke, $43 million in the red. Meanwhile, also this week, the county legislature was arguing about what to do with millions of dollars of excess revenue. Should they just give it back to the taxpayers or what? Hey, wait a minute, does it strike anyone out there that there is a solution that would make a lot of sense for the city and the county?.
• Why? The city of Syracuse is a basket case. This week Mayor Miner announced that in three years the city would be totally broke, $43 million in the red. Meanwhile, also this week, the county legislature was arguing about what to do with millions of dollars of excess revenue. Should they just give it back to the taxpayers or what? Hey, wait a minute, does it strike anyone out there that there is a solution that would make a lot of sense for the city and the county?.

• Central N.Y. can’t allow the city of Syracuse to go under and fail. Syracuse is the basic core of Central New York. We can’t allow the core of Onondaga County to fail.

• Suburban sprawl over the last 60 years has sucked our city dry of resources and tax base. We have shrunk from a fairly prosperous 220,000 people in the city in 1950 to a dismal 137,000 people now. In 1950 there were 5 big department stores in downtown Syracuse and no vacancies on Salina and Warren Streets. Today those two streets are virtually empty retail wise, the office buildings as well. There’s a big 12-story fairly modern looking office building opposite city hall that has been vacant for 20 years. We tore down thousands of buildings in Syracuse in those 61 years to make parking lots and super highways for the cars of people who moved to homes in Onondaga county suburbs. Are we now going to abandon the city?

• The county and the various county authorities, OCCRA, OCWA, CENTRO, Central Library System etc. already do much of the day-to-day operations in the city; so why not let the county do everything? On January 1, 2020, hand over the assets and liabilities of the city to the county.

• What would the county do? Ideally, in order to save the name of our area….no one knows who Onondaga County is….the  county would say we are now going to be “Syracuse” all 467,026 of us. We will become one great city contiguous with the county line.

• Wow. One huge incentive is that we would save millions of dollars by not having separate duplicate service and maintenance in school districts, villages and towns. We have dozens of those. We would be one large school district…like a number of states now have….saving huge amounts of money in administrative costs and purchasing savings.

• Individual schools could all keep their own names, teachers, staff and sports schedule for now, but we would be moving toward a more integrated district…young families wouldn’t want to move to Madison County for example.

• Our expensive mess of dozens of little town and village governments and DPWs within the county could over time largely disappear…they could become “neighborhoods”….saving more millions for everybody.

• Suddenly we would be the 35th largest city in the country larger than NBA and NFL cities Buffalo, Cleveland, Sacramento, Atlanta, Miami, Oakland, New Orleans, Cincinnati and Orlando. We should appoint a committee immediately to work toward the goal of becoming an NFL, NBA or MLBB team city.

• Suddenly we would be an economic and political powerhouse able to market ourselves on an international basis for everything, new businesses, conventions etc. Syracuse’s 500 mile radius includes 3/4 of the population of the country and most of the Canadian population. (500 Miles is a travel unit “day” maximum for trucks and business travel other than air.) Start the buzz.

• So why the year 2020? Because it might be the earliest politically acceptable date. And also then local businesses, governments, workers and families looking for a home and school could all start planning accordingly. By 2020, if the change were done to be irrevocable, most of the transition would have already occurred. But how to get it done?

• We don’t, unfortunately, have a methodology to do this. Our community leaders have no established protocol for so called grand plans. Of the four biggest powers in the CNY community: the county, the city, the university and the Post Standard, only the Post Standard has the power to bring the others to a true negotiating table. How about it Post Standard? We want you to be our hero.

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CONVERT SHOPPINGTOWN INTO A WALKABLE COMMUNITY

There has been a lot of discussion this week on the listserv about Dead Malls, (Shoppingtown?) and the desirability of Walkable Communities.

 So when you make Shoppingtown into a Walkable Living Community of say 2,500 people, maybe you solve both problems. I spent an hour or so and made a little overlay for the back area of Shoppingtown on Kinney Road and leading over to “Agway” and very roughly laid in 1,000 average two bed room condominiums or apartments. There is enough existing unused parking to easily accommodate an additional thousand cars in that area when the existing 1500 car garage is included. I also included a Community Building that would have Living Community amenities: exercise, swimming etc and, of course, the fine Dewitt Library is right there as well and don’t forget the food court.

Of course everything would be fully accessible with an opportunity for area seniors to stay here and not have to move out of town just to get an accessible apartment. It’s just a block diagram, so don’t take the design quality seriously please. Let’s just estimate a taxable project of 1,000 apts x 200k = $200 million to support local services etc with almost no new infrastructure required and very little in the way of added community services. I guess if I were a developer, I would be interested in doing this project.  But, I’m not; I’m a retired architect.

And I would suppose that Shoppingtown would be thrilled to have 2,500 on site shoppers living there who could walk over and buy things every day or so.

David C. Ashley

davidcashley@gmail.com

101 Windsor Pl. Syracuse, NY, 13210

h315.422.7764; c751-6382

www.davidcashley.com

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EXECUTIVE CHARRETTES- A WAY FOR COMMUNITIES TO LEAP FORWARD INTO THE FUTURE

By: Dave Ashley, August 5, 2012

Every community has various governing and leadership groups present. But, in most cases they do not have a mechanism to operate together to make collective decisions.  We all know that many important initiatives never happen and others occur on a Lone Ranger style because we have no mechanism to work together in today’s communities. The Executive Charrette is a method of accomplishing those important community collective decisions in a prompt and expeditious manner.

Using the example of Central New York, and specifically Onondaga County and the important governing and leadership groups within the County, the framework for the Executive Charrettes might be as follows: visualize a room with tables set in a U-shaped fashion with 50 chairs for 25 leading decision-makers and their second in command, at the end of that U is a presentation area for the charrette leadership team. A support/audience area surrounds the U-shaped tables for representatives from each of the 25 decision-makers. If the 50 people were equally divided on three sides of the U shaped group, it would be about 16 to 18 feet on a side; that’s workable.

An executive committee of say 8 decision-makers on a rotating basis would be responsible for the agenda in cooperation with the facilitator. Meetings ideally would be four or six times a year at 7 AM to 9:30 AM with coffee and greeting starting at 6:30 AM. Special invited guests of importance would have say two seats. The governor should come at least once a year, Rick Fedrizzi, president of US Green Building Council would come, our two state senators at least once or twice a year. Expert presenters for the program would sit with the facilitator team.

Just a 1st crack at a list of important decision-makers and community leaders might be as follows: County executive, Mayor of Syracuse, chief executive of our 3 colleges and universities, majority and minority leaders of the Common Council, majority and minority leaders of the County Legislature, our state representatives and senators, the superintendent of city schools, a representative superintendent of schools the County, two representatives of the towns and villages, the editor of the Post Standard, president of the two hospitals, Center States CEO, 2020 rep., F.O.C.U.S. rep., Citizens League rep., labor rep. and maybe two or three others. That equals approximately 25 people. Additionally, each executive could invite an agreed on number of staff people. For example, ideally the whole common Council and County Legislature would be present. If the support or staff people averaged eight people, that would be a total support audience of say 200 people about four or five rows deep behind the main tables

The charrette process, built around that three Es, allows everyone to be heard and to hear the other person’s proposals, problems and comments. Using a professional charrette facilitator, like John Boecker of the 7 Group, can start to whittle down and prioritize options and finally before the meeting is over, potentially some major agreement. All in one great meeting.

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Onondaga County Renewable Energy Authority (OCREA)

By: David C. Ashley, AIA, LEED AP;May 4, 2009

Purposes and Functions of OCREA-

1. Promote the use and production of renewable energy sources in Central New York including, wind power, PV solar, active solar, harvested bio fuels (willows, switchgrass, agricultural waste) and low impact hydo.
2. Become the facilitator of the biofuels industry in CNY by a public (OCREA)/private partnerships to: (a) contract with suppliers of bio fuels (farmers, wood products firms with waste to sell etc), and (b) become the middleman harvesting, trucking, storage and replanting (specialized expensive equipment is needed for planting and harvesting) and (c) promoting and financing biofuels burning equipment for users starting with large scale userslike commercial and institutional buildings first. This would require bonding for certain equipment and facilities which Authorities are capable of doing.
3. Construct and operate a biofuels cogeneration plant(s) to generate electricity and process heat using biofuels supplied under item 1 above and using municipally picked up bio yard waste in addition to contracted biofuels.
4. Finance renewable energy facilities for users in CNY. Rationale: Extra first cost usually dooms desirable renewable energy options. This financing would be up to a 20 year loan program to finance this equipment such as solar, bio fuels and high performance envelope installations such as high R windows, walls and roofs etc.
5. Promote, own or finance cogeneration equipment in private or public buildings with net metering. Rationale: Cogen increase greatly the efficiency of fuel use and relieves the electric grid of overload at peak load conditions such as summer heat peaks.
6. Own (by purchase, building or partnering) out of area renewable energy generating facilities such as wind farms, low impact hydro, solar farms etc for the benefit of the Authorities area customers. Offer to build for new industries moving to the area. Partner with major institutions such as area colleges to do this. The Authority would raise the money by bonding.
7. Promote (and require where possible) Architecture 2030 building construction standards. Conduct education programs on building energy conservation and financing available. Rationale: Buildings use 40% of our total energy.
8. Promote and facilitate electric cars vehicles and convenient recharging facilities- Rationale: Electric vehicles are inevitable as we run out of nonrenewable energy and use renewable sources to generate the electric power needed to run the cars. Maybe we could get an electric car company started in Syracuse. We could call it the Franklin II.
9. Promote and facilitate establishment or relocation of manufacturers of related equipment here in CNY. We have an empty Carrier plant that could be building a lot of the equipment that the OCREA will need like gasifies, willow planting and harvesting equipment, biofuels transport trucks, windmill parts, pellet manufacturing equipment, solar panels etc.

Why We Need OCREA

1. The world is rapidly using up the non renewable fuel and energy sources (Oil, natural gas and inexpensive coal) that have fueled the great prosperity of the last century. We produce almost none locally except a tiny amount of natural gas. Discovery of new oil world wide peaked about 20 years ago and has declined ever since. Yet demand is still growing especially in areas like China.
2. As the demand and supply curves separate, prices for non renewable energy go up exponentially. When one goes up like oil, we discovered to our dismay that even non scarce coal and natural gas escalated in cost by almost 50% also. The future will probably be a lot worse. As T. Boon Pickens has said: this will be the greatest transfer of wealth the world has ever seen (transfer from the consumer nations like us to the supplier nations) in the trillions of dollars.
3. In CNY, we export or give away probably several thousand dollars per household in direct energy costs and an untold amount in indirect costs for the energy used by our stores, non residential buildings, street lights, buses, industries and their associated transportation. This export of money will be come proportionately larger as prices escalate at a rate much higher than inflation.
4. AND THE ANSWER IS?: Sooner or later we will have to be doing what we did only about 100 years ago which is to supply all of our energy locally. And since we don’t have oil, natural gas in an amount needed or coal our only choices are renewable energy sources like harvested bio fuels, wind power, PV solar, active solar or low impact hydro all on a locally harvested basis. Plus we need to conserve as much energy as possible first. Before you start heating the barn you need to close the barn door first.
5. BUT HOW? The federal or state governments will rescue us and do it for us won’t they? You already know the answer, which is mostly “NO” and what little is done outside of our area will still keep us in the import-export business: import energy; export our hard earned dollars only at a continuingly escalating cost. We will have to do it LOCALLY and that’s the primary reason we need OCREA as outlined in the section below.
6. BENEFITS of Doing OCREA Now- Our sustainable energy future will be guaranteed. Millions of local dollars will go to local farmers, truckers, equipment builders and all of the other local businesses and workers needed to make this happen. There may be thousands of new local jobs related to the great transformation. And the longer we wait to get started the poorer we will be and the cost will be greater. Our immediate energy costs may be the same even more, but our economy will benefit by untold increases on jobs, new industries, keeping existing industries and basically learning to live in harmony with our one and only planet earth. Let’s do it now! Is there any reason to wait now that we know what needs to be done?

DCA

VISIONARY 2

Salina Street Mall

If the powers to be  had acted to do this back when I proposed it years ago, we would have a vibrant downtown..all paying taxes… and no Destiny USA that doesn’t pay any taxes.  I was a young architect at the time with an office in the historic Gere Bank Building near Clinton Square. I took the plans across the street to the Post-Standard building and showed them to the publisher, Stephen Rogers. He got very excited about the possibilities and put the story in a 7 page spread in the Sunday magazine that the paper published called the Empire Magazine. It generated a lot of interest, but unfortunately there was no physical follow-up and it never got built.

My plan envisioned enclosing Salina Street and part of Jefferson at the roof level of the mostly  four-story buildings with a roof and a large continuous center skylight. Down below, the 99 foot wide  Salina Street would become the enclosed mall with upper-level walkways on both sides similar to the typical way shopping malls are done today, but in this case it opened up the 2nd floors of the existing buildings for new stores. At the time there were no enclosed shopping malls in central New York. Later, I designed the 1st enclosed mall, Fairmount Fair, for the firm I was working for at the time. Then, in a few years, Bob Congel built The Carousel Center Mall a few miles north of Salina Street. He said it wouldn’t hurt downtown, but soon, one by one, the department stores downtown closed and then small stores followed suit and soon downtown was a ghost town. If my plan had been built, we would still not only have a vibrant successful downtown shopping mall, but the stores would all be paying real estate taxes unlike Carousel Center Mall and now Destiny USA which have 30 year tax exemptions for some reason.

This was essentially the beginning of my visionary career. Many projects followed that over a period of years and up to the present.