ENDICOTT — With jobs, jobs, and more jobs on the way, the Village of Endicott’s $10 million Downtown Revitalization Initiative (DRI) award couldn’t have come at a better time. “We need good apartments for all the new jobs that we have,” Endicott Mayor Linda Jackson says. Imperium 3 NY plans to create more than 2,000 […]
ENDICOTT — With jobs, jobs, and more jobs on the way, the Village of Endicott’s $10 million Downtown Revitalization Initiative (DRI) award couldn’t have come at a better time.
“We need good apartments for all the new jobs that we have,” Endicott Mayor Linda Jackson says. Imperium 3 NY plans to create more than 2,000 jobs at its lithium-ion battery plant. Binghamton University and other partners received nearly $64 million last fall to progress in its plan to make the Tri-Cities region, including Endicott, a hub for battery manufacturing.
The DRI funding will allow for public and private projects in the village that create housing, expand community and cultural amenities, create new businesses, and more to unite four distinct downtown region into a vibrant city center.
Jackson credits the beginning of the revitalization to Phoenix Investors, LLC, which purchased the former IBM campus in the village. “It really gave Endicott the shot in the arm that it needed,” she says.
Since then, renovations are taking place at 10 Washington Ave., at a former furniture store, and a new restaurant is opening in the old Acropolis Restaurant location.
It just took a few projects to break the ice, Jackson says, to spur further development plans.
Projects to benefit from DRI funding include renovating a large mixed-use building at 32-36 Washington Ave. to add apartments and a high-end restaurant, building a mixed-use development with 15 apartments along Washington Avenue, and revitalizing the Southern Tier Community Center with building and site upgrades.
“It’s very important we have this community center to give the kids something to do,” Jackson contends. Work will also include pool upgrades and transforming a parking lot into a basketball court.
A project to redevelop a long-vacant site, once home to a Kmart discount-retail store, isn’t moving forward as planned, Jackson notes, but there is still hope for the site. Green Mountain Electric Supply was going to locate there, but recently it was learned there are limitations to the site due to environmental issues. While Green Mountain is now looking in nearby Kirkwood for a possible site, Jackson says the former Kmart site can still be redeveloped into something else. Parking, in particular, would be helpful, she adds. “There are a lot of things that can be done.”
One of the projects Jackson is most looking forward to is the creation of a wine-tasting facility in the village’s Little Italy region. While Endicott is already home to Crooked Mouth Brewing, it’s good for people to have options, she adds.
Jackson is also excited about the $600,000 matching-grant program the village is starting. While the matching level hasn’t been set yet, the mayor says Endicott’s portion will be sizeable as an incentive for owners to fix up buildings.
The village’s part in all the improvements will include street and sidewalk improvements, including signage, to build on work started several years ago.
The state’s Downtown Revitalization Initiative helps communities transform downtown neighborhoods to improve quality of life and become magnets for redevelopment, business growth, job creation, and economic and housing diversity. In late 2021, New York State announced Endicott had won a $10 million DRI award. A year later, Endicott announced the projects it had selected for the DRI funding.