Cornhill Project looks to revitalize Utica neighborhood

UTICA — A project spearheaded by the Community Foundation of Herkimer and Oneida Counties will create more than 100 apartments along with commercial and community space as part of an effort to revitalize Utica’s Cornhill neighborhood. The Cornhill Project — an initiative that also includes People First, Mid-Utica Neighborhood Preservation Corporation, Collective Impact Network, and the City of Utica — is the response to outreach from a neighborhood that feels forgotten and left behind as economic development reaches other parts of the city, says Project Manager Tyler Hutchinson, who also serves as the Community Foundation’s business process manager. The project got its start about nine years ago, he says, when the community began reaching out. In response, the Community Foundation engaged with the community to find out what residents felt was missing in the neighborhood and to collaboratively develop a solution. “The biggest thing was lack of resources,” Hutchinson says. That includes things like access to healthy and fresh food, dealing with blight, and access to services without having to travel outside the neighborhood. As a whole, the community expressed a desire for a centralized location to provide those things and help bring the community together. Partnering with the city and other organizations, the Cornhill Project has developed a plan to address those issues through the creation of two “impact centers” in the neighborhood.

The West Street Impact Center, to be located at 1115 West St., will provide a space for various agencies to operate from and bring services to Cornhill. The James Street Impact Center, to be located at 313 James St., will focus on young professionals with programming centered around business and healthy living with workforce housing on the upper floors. Combined, the centers will create more than 100 apartments along with 30,000 square feet of commercial and community space with other features including a business incubator, an arts/media studio, a gym/wellness facility, and a neighborhood grocery store. “Right now, we are in the process of financial closing,” Hutchinson says. It’s a competitive process through a variety of funding streams, and the Community Foundation is waiting to hear back from the state and other funding streams to get a closing timeline. “Everything points to closing at the end of 2025 with shovels in the ground in 2026.” In the meantime, work on West Street to demolish existing structures has begun, and the Community Foundation is actively working on other components of the project, says Hutchinson. One of those components is a recreation trail that incorporates the neighborhood’s history via art. The Community Foundation is working with both Utica and the Oneida County Planning Department on the trail along with local artists and resident historians to help capture and celebrate the area’s history. Project organizers are also working to remain connected to the community and keep the community engaged and involved during the process, says Kayla Ellis, business communication manager at the Community Foundation. The foundation held a community dinner in October to update residents on the project and regularly posts updates on the project’s social media pages. “There’s so much hope in that neighborhood now,” Ellis says. The organization is also very focused on activating space as soon as possible and is working to find space in the Cornhill neighborhood for services and programming from various agencies, Hutchinson notes. The foundation hopes to collaborate with other organizations to bring in services to address issues such as youth violence as soon as it can. Those services can then transition to the impact centers once they open. The key to the entire project is collaboration — between the residents, the foundation, its project partners, and other organizations. “It’s exciting to see everybody working together, and everybody has that hope,” Hutchinson says.