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Restore NY

Housing, Wing Ding, craft beer and awareness walk on tap for City Council tonight

By Joanne Beck

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Market rate housing, the resurrection of Wing Ding, a craft beer festival and Alzheimer’s awareness walk, the Jackson Square redesign and a public hearing are all on tap for City Council’s conference meeting this week.

And that is to be followed by a special business meeting for several votes and an executive session to discuss “employment matters and real estate.”

The conference meeting is set for 7 p.m. Monday in the Council Board Room, second floor of City Hall.

Assistant City Manager Erik Fix is expected to outline a plan to create single-family homes and market-rate rentals to help supply Genesee County’s future housing needs of more than 4,800 units, according to a memo from Fix to City Council. The demand for housing is anticipated in correlation with the WNY STAMP project in the western part of the county.

“With low vacancy rates and free houses available for sale, if a surge of development attracted employment into the region, workers would need to look outside of the county for housing,” Fix said.

He is proposing that the Batavia Home Fund be established to capitalize Payment in Lieu of Taxes (PILOT) payments from project investors and land sales to plump up the fund.

The city will also be exploring a Core Housing Owner Incentive Exemption program based on a similar program in Rochester that provides exemptions for multi-family homes to convert to single-family homes, and for construction of new housing stock, Fix said.

As Genesee County, via a related committee, pursues hosting an air show once again, the city is considering resurrecting the Wing Ding that ran in conjunction with the former Wings of Eagles air show at Genesee County Airport. Fix is also expected to review the potential for a Wing Ding weekend, and transfer a leftover amount of $9,188 from the Centennial Celebration and move it into a Wing Ding account.

Air show committee leader and county highway superintendent Tim Hens has said that several people have asked that the air show be brought back, and many folks have shared fond memories from each event on opposite sides of the county -- at Genesee County Airport on Saile Drive and in downtown Batavia.

After years of committee meetings, investigation and talk about the potential for Creek Park, situated behind the ice arena, city officials are also expected to discuss the option of performing an environmental review for it to house a future business operation.

Eli Fish apparently doesn't want the fun to stop and has applied for a craft beer festival in Jackson Square later next month. That event, and an Alzheimer's awareness walk on Oct. 1 are up for review by council during its conference session. 

File photo of a previous air show. 

Genesee County agrees to help Healthy Living Campus officials with grant process

By Joanne Beck

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Rochester Regional Health and United Memorial Medical Center officials would like Genesee County on board to assist with a $2 million grant for the Healthy Living project in downtown Batavia.

Working through Ed Flynn of LaBella Associates, hospital officials plan to apply for the grant and, if approved, funding would “flow through the county,” County Manager Matt Landers said Wednesday.

“There would be no county match, and no county cost,” he said to legislators during their Ways & Means committee meeting at the Old Courthouse.

Restore NY grant
The grant is to go toward some of the demolition costs of the GLOW YMCA site between Wiard and Bank streets, he said. The county can charge up to $10,000 for administrative costs, “which should be more than enough for us to cover our costs,” Landers said.

“I would liken this similar to a (Community Development Block Grant) project where the (county’s Economic Development Center) usually comes to us and has a private business out there that wants to secure funds for a project for economic development and their job creation,” he said. “And then we basically utilize grant ministries, grant administration services … So this will be a very similar arrangement, but less intensive. According to Ed Flynn, the CDBG project is a little more intensive. This is less intensive. So I don't see a drawback.”

The unusual part, he said, was that this request is to approve an intent to apply before actually applying for the grant. That letter of intent was due Thursday, and the next step would be to get the Legislature’s blessings on the actual grant application, he said.

“So if there are reservations around, they can still be raised,” he said. “So it's a little nontraditional process where I'm coming to you with the intent to apply. And then we'll be voting on formal permission to apply, within the attached resolutions, that will come forward probably in September.”

The committee approved his request, and Genesee County will be submitting a Restore NY round six grant to support the development of the Healthy Living Campus. United Memorial Medical Center – Rochester Regional Health (UMMC-RRH), and GLOW YMCA have partnered to develop a $33.5 million, two-story 78,000 square-foot regional health and wellness facility, which will integrate a new YMCA facility with state-of-the-art medical space for the Healthy Living program.

New versus old YMCA
Restore NY funds will be used by the development team to demolish the old 40,000 square-foot YMCA, and an 8,500 square-foot obsolete boiler house owned by UMMC-RRH, which will provide space to accommodate a new downtown park and parking lot. The project was selected as a priority Downtown Revitalization Initiative project and is also supported by the Batavia Brownfield Opportunity Area plan. UMMC/RRH will lead the development team.

Demolition of YMCA won’t be for a while, as the new building site at the former Cary Hall and Elks Lodge needs to be in place for the facility’s members to use, said Rob Walker, CEO of GLOW YMCA. There shouldn’t be any downtime for members, as they will transition over to the freshly completed site while the older YM building is taken down, he said.

“And continue operations without hurting the community and our services to the community — that was important to us, both from a mission standpoint and service standpoint, but also fiscally being responsible as well,” Walker said Thursday to The Batavian. “So the demolition is all dependent on completion of, and a certificate of occupancy for, the new YMCA UMMC building.”

The facility has previously been outlined — a pool, updated exercise equipment, and brand new amenities alongside Healthy Living’s teaching kitchen, classrooms and offices — and Walker described the outside space being “a nice streetscape park area” with benches, trees, lighting and an open grassy area for some outdoor activities, plus additional parking space.

“That's the beauty of what we're doing. There'll be additional parking there that kind of complements the site. There's two main entrances to the facility, one is on the northwest section, and then one is on the south section, that both enter into and through a nice corridor to the welcome desk, where a member services representative will direct them to where they need to go.”

He also emphasized that the nonprofit’s board and volunteers have talked about this eventual move for the last four or five years, and the county’s Senior Center was always part of the vision.

“Our true hope is that we can add on to the YM space where the current one is to include the Senior Center. It’s really important to volunteers and board members,” he said. “It’s our hope that the Genesee County Senior Center would join the Healthy Living campus.”

The former Cary Hall and Elks buildings have been razed, and new construction is to begin this fall. It was important to YMCA leaders not to disrupt the many services offered, including childcare, swimming lessons and exercise classes and offerings to varied age groups, he said.

“We want to be able to continue to do those services and keep the momentum that we have with those programs as well. They're all doing really well, there's a lot of wait lists, and we're going to be able to serve more people in the new facility. So that's going to help. Our capacities are pretty much limited in the existing YMCA,” he said. “It takes a little while to line up these contractors. We'll have a better idea this fall, or even late summer, on the timing of that lineup. Obviously, there's a lot of labor shortages, supply issues, that are affecting all these contractors.”

Construction plans
As has been said early on, the plan remains for completion to be in late 2023, or early 2024, depending on the labor and supply availability. A project such as this typically takes 16 to 18 months, and that’s if “everything flows under the construction timeline,” he said. But it’s a fluid timeline, he added.

Walker is grateful for the local support of municipalities and donors. Project costs are about $23 million for YMCA and $10 million for the RRH-UMMC portion.

“We appreciate the county and the city support on earmarking, this. Our escalation costs have been tremendous in the last two years. So we've had to dig deeper than we already have. We've raised over $14 million on our side, on the Y side, so we've got to keep going,” he said. “And we will, but we've got 95 percent of what we need. So we're confident that in the next four months we'll be able to close the small gap.”

Top photo: 2022 File Photo of demolition for the new Healthy Living Campus in downtown Batavia. The next phase to knock down YMCA is set for this fall, and officials are in the process of applying for a $2 million Restore NY grant to help with costs. Photo by Howard Owens.

Batavia's Ellicott Station, Perry's downtown project receive $500K each in Restore NY funding

By Mike Pettinella

The City of Batavia and the Village of Perry are among the beneficiaries of the latest round of Restore New York Communities Initiative money designed to reinvigorate downtowns and generate economic opportunity in communities throughout the state.

According to a press release issued by Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s office, funds in the amount of $500,000 each have been allocated to Batavia for demolition, remediation and rehabilitation of the former Ellicott Station to create a mixed-use facility, and to Perry for the Restore Downtown Perry Project.

City Manager Jason Molino said the award reinforces the strides Batavia has made in the area of redevelopment in recent months.

“This affirms the state’s commitment to the City of Batavia and belief in what we’re trying to do here,” Molino said. “This makes a total of $2.4 million that the state has invested into the city.”

In December, the state awarded a $1.9 million Consolidated Funding Application grant by the Finger Lakes Regional Development Council for the Ellicott Station project -- a $17 million renovation and redevelopment of the former Santy’s Tire Shop and Soccio & Della Penna Construction site on Ellicott Street into a retail/commercial/residential complex.

Molino said that remediation work is “already in motion” between the Batavia Development Corp. and Buffalo developer Samuel Savarino, and he expects construction to begin this year.

As far as the Restore New York Communities Initiative is concerned, nearly $40 million was awarded to 75 municipalities through Round 4 of the program, which was enacted in the 2016 fiscal year budget and designated to Empire State Development for implementation.

For Round 4, cities, towns and villages were all eligible to apply for support for projects that include demolition, deconstruction, rehabilitation or reconstruction of vacant, abandoned, condemned and surplus properties.

For a full list of projects, go to <https://www.governor.ny.gov/sites/governor.ny.gov/files/atoms/files/RestoreNYFundingList.pdf>.

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