An ambitious plan to wake a “sleeping giant” is well underway on the 95-acre site once occupied by the Emerson Power Transmission Plant. The plant, which once employed about 10 percent of Ithaca’s population, has suffered environmental ills since the 1980s and ceased operations by 2009. Since then, the area has been left largely untouched and is unprofitable for the city and its residents.
Horseheads-based Unchained Properties, LLC, is now joining forces with the city of Ithaca to repurpose the land into a “live, work, and play” district that could provide housing and a business hub to South Hill at the cost of $100 million.
The plan casts off the site’s industrial history and replaces it with a vision of a sustainable community village dubbed the “Chain Works District.” Upon completion, in around 7 to 10 years, this neighborhood would be home to restaurants, bookstores, a small grocery store, all open to the public, and 915 new housing units—far greater than the 749 new housing units Ithaca has seen in the past decade.
But the road to the reality of Chain Works District is not without obstacles, the largest of which is the extensive contamination from almost a century of heavy industrial use. The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) classifies the site as a Class 2 Superfund, meaning it poses a “significant threat to the public health or environment” and requires some kind of action. Tests have thus far detected barium, cyanide, free-petroleum products, metals in soil, and chlorinated volatile organic compounds, which include TCE, a contaminant that South Hill has already experienced issues with. Whatever remediation strategies are necessary to make the site safe, Emerson has assumed full responsibility.
Aside from the remediation of hazardous waste, the Chain Works District project will have many environmental impacts on the surrounding area and the site itself, according to the Project Team’s Draft Generic Environmental Impact Statement. The Lead Agency deemed this statement adequate early April. The forum is now open to the public for comments and concerns about the project, which can be submitted at the Chain Works District project website (www.chainworksdistrict.com/geis).
Completed for approval by the City of Ithaca Planning Board and the State Environmental Quality Review, this document outlines all possible environmental effects of the project and how the harmful ones may be mitigated, such as the upheaval of contaminants and increased traffic downtown and on state route 96B.
In response to traffic, only one specific concern, Unchained Properties has hired traffic engineers to develop strategies to keep traffic as low as feasible. The routes of public buses will be modified to strategically serve the influx of travelers in and out of the area, and a bike-sharing system will be put in place. According to the final statement on the subject, the Chain Works District will generate less traffic than the Emerson Power Plant did at the peak of its activity.
Besides these manageable concerns about harmful effects, the leaders of the project have cited sustainability as one of their highest priorities. Already equipped with 800,000 square feet of usable building space, the designers of the infrastructure will refurbish and reuse as much of the existing building material as possible. Additionally, sights have been set on adhering to the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) standards, which would earn the district a third-party certification based on safe materials, energy efficiency, and other measures of environmental sustainability.