Syracuse/CNY

January 2024

Syracuse, the heart of Central New York and the employment and cultural center of Onondaga County, is where I've lived for over 40 years.

Our term-limited, Independent Syracuse Mayor Ben Walsh will complete his term at the end of 2025.  Our Republican Onondaga County Executive, Ryan McMahon, was re-elected to a second term in November 2023. Together, and separately, they're still working on doing good things for Central New York.

And Central New York? We're on the map, right now, as a result of the massive Micron deal.

Micron intends to invest up to $100 billion over the next 20-plus years to construct a new megafab in Clay, New York, with the first phase investment of $20 billion planned by the end of this decade. This represents the largest private investment in New York state history. Micron’s investment in Onondaga County, New York, will complement the company’s previously announced high-volume manufacturing fab in Boise, Idaho. Micron will design, build, and operate the facility in accordance with its sustainability goals. The site could eventually include four 600,000 square-foot cleanrooms, for a total of 2.4 million square feet of cleanroom space – the size of approximately 40 U.S. football fields.

The chip company has already started investing in the community, in a number of ways; the community has already started trying to figure out how to be a good host for Micron, and all  the jobs and opportunities, and how to be worthy of the investment.

We're still preparing for the process to remove the I-81 viaduct that cuts through the middle of the city, and at the same time, we're still fighting off lawsuits against the project, all these years after the discussion started. On the plus side? Lots of construction has started, north and south of the city; importantly, there's judicial approval to continue. Most of the work in progress is making the changes needed to swing current I-81 traffic onto existing I-481, which becomes I-81 going forward. I still think it's likely I won't live to see the project completed, but we'll see. 

As it has for years, poverty continues to be an issue for us. The State Comptroller, Tom DiNapoli, issued a report in 2022 showing that in Syracuse, one in four families were living in poverty in 2021. That's something that will need to be continually addressed and worked on. 

There's a lot we have to work on, and celebrate, as we move into the new year. I'll use Grains of Salt posts to focus on local efforts.  Keywords Syracuse, I-81, and Onondaga County also will help, or try Neighborhoods. You can also search for local politicians, including Walsh and McMahon, by name.