Syracuse officials are thinking about moving city police and fire headquarters out of downtown to a vacant factory building about a mile to the west, near Fowler High School.
If that happens, it would mark the first time in the city’s 175-year history that Syracuse police operate from headquarters outside the downtown area.
There’s no agreement in place yet, and the deal could fall through. But after years of complaints from cops and firefighters about the aging Public Safety Building, and after scouting a variety of possible alternatives, city officials have zeroed in on a new location they like.
Ironically, the building city officials have their eye on is four decades older than the Public Safety Building, which opened in 1964.
The six-story factory at 1153 W. Fayette St. – built to make automotive and railway parts in the 1920s – is a better candidate for full-scale renovation than the PSB, city officials said.
The factory has twice as much space on each floor as the PSB, allowing a more modern office design, officials said.
Deputy Mayor Sharon Owens said city officials are drafting a letter of intent to developer Joe Gehm, of the Lahinch Group, to formally confirm their plan to negotiate a long-term lease for police and fire departments to occupy the building. Gehm said he is in the process of buying the building.
If Gehm and the city can agree on a lease, the Common Council would have to approve it to move forward.
“It is our intent to further pursue this as an option,’’ Owens said. “We don’t have final numbers -- we don’t have any of that. We just know, of all the properties that we looked at, this was the one that was closer to meeting the need.”
The plan will revive long-simmering discussions about the future of the PSB. So far, there is no plan for what happens to the high-profile building if the cops and firefighters move out.
Lease negotiations are expected to take several months, and a full renovation of the old factory would take at least 18 months, said Matthew Oja, assessment commissioner. If the deal goes forward, it would be at least two years before police and fire departments could move out of the PSB.
Police brass have been looking for a new home, off and on, for more than two decades. Then-Chief Tim Foody complained in 1999 that the PSB was “falling down around my head.”
City officials that year studied the possibility of moving police to the former Central Tech high school, which is now slated to become a countywide STEAM school.
Eight years later, then-Mayor Matt Driscoll advocated demolishing the PSB and moving police and fire personnel to the former Nynex building across from City Hall. That building has since been renovated as pricey apartments.
The PSB was a disappointment almost from the start.
The six-story building at 511 S. State St. originally included a 212-cell jail, replacing an antiquated jail that could only hold 29 inmates. It also provided a new home for the police department, which moved from its former headquarters on Willow Street near Clinton Square.
Two years after the PSB opened, federal prison inspectors called the jail “demoralizing” because the facility had no windows and lousy ventilation.
In 1986, a federal judge declared the overcrowded PSB jail unconstitutional, forcing Onondaga County to begin plans for a new jail, which opened next door in 1995.
The shuttered PSB jail is now used for storage. Most of the rest of the building is used for city police and fire offices.
‘Computers weren’t a thing’
Richard Shoff, first deputy chief of police, said public safety officials have long considered the PSB dingy and obsolete. The cramped offices have asbestos tiles in the floor and the ceiling and are not conducive to wiring with modern electronics, among other problems, Shoff said.
“When the building was built, computers weren’t a thing. Those cabling channels weren’t really there. I’ve seen better designs that are more in line with 21st Century policing,’’ Shoff said.
The city owns 61% of the PSB, and Onondaga County owns 39%. Although the county no longer has a presence in the building since the jail closed, the county manages the property and bills the city under the terms of an agreement signed in 1978.
It’s not cheap. Syracuse will pay the county $1,294,578 this year to occupy a building of which the city is majority owner. That equates to $16.77 per square foot. By comparison, the city is paying $14.25 per square foot to lease Class A office space at One Park Place down the street.
The factory at 1153 W. Fayette offers several potential advantages, city officials said.
The building is on the National Register of Historic Places and qualifies for historic tax credits, which a private developer could use but a municipality could not. As a result, Gehm, whose company specializes in fixing up historic buildings, said he would be able to offer the city “below-market rent.’’
Among other projects, Gehm’s company previously renovated the Meaker Building on Erie Boulevard West, now home to Home HeadQuarters; the former Addis department store on Salina Street; and the former General Ice Cream factory on Wilkinson Street that now houses Middle Ages Brewery.
The West Fayette Street property has a parking lot that can accommodate roughly 180 cars.
That would enable patrol officers to park their private vehicles and report for roll call at police headquarters, rather than at the facility they now use on Erie Boulevard East. Police have used the Erie Boulevard location since the department’s North Garage next to the PSB was demolished in 2000 to make way for a new court building.
“Our patrol division is split off from the rest of the police department,” Shoff said. “We’d like to try to get that all back under one roof.”
There are some minor downsides to moving away from downtown, Shoff said.
Police offices would no longer be adjacent to court buildings or the district attorney’s office, for one. To compensate, the department would likely rent space at One Park Place, where some other city departments are housed, for detectives to use while awaiting court appearances or conducting other business downtown, Shoff said.
The West Fayette location also might be less convenient for citizens without cars to visit the police department. Shoff said during the past month police staff have asked residents who enter the PSB what ZIP Code they live in and whether they traveled to the PSB without a car. He had not quantified the results as of last week.
Transmissions for tanks
Gehm and Lahinch Group have donated a combined $3,250 to Mayor Ben Walsh’s election campaigns since 2016. They also have given to other local politicians, including County Executive Ryan McMahon, former Common Councilor Tim Rudd and mayoral candidate Joe Nicoletti.
City officials said Gehm’s political support was not a factor in selecting a site. Gehm said he proposed last year to buy City Hall Commons, but city officials rejected his bid in favor of another developer.
For the factory at 1153 W. Fayette, a major renovation would mark the first time in decades that the building has been in full use. In recent years, a few small commercial tenants have come and gone, but the top three floors of the building have been shuttered for decades.
Built in 1920-21, the factory was known as Building J of the Lipe-Rollway Corp., according to documents submitted to place it on the National Register.
It was part of a large manufacturing complex that grew out of the C.E. Lipe machine shop near the corner of South Geddes and West Fayette streets. Lipe-Rollway and its predecessors made gears and bearings for railway cars, automobiles (including the nearby Franklin auto works) and other uses.
In 1942, Building J was taken over by the U.S. government to make transmissions and other parts for Sherman tanks, aircraft and other heavy equipment used in World War II. The factory operated around the clock and earned a commendation for excellence from the Army and Navy. The government released the factory from service in 1947.
The factory never found much of a purpose after that. It was used as warehouse space for several decades, then converted into offices in the 1990s.
As for the PSB, there is no plan yet for what would happen to it if public safety departments move out. Owens said city officials would consult their co-owner, the county, in that case.
“We’d begin conversations with the county. I can see they could see it as an asset, because of the jail and the courts on either side of it,’’ she said. “So we would begin those discussions.”
Do you have a news tip or a story idea? Contact reporter Tim Knauss: email | Twitter | | 315-470-3023.
Ad Choices