Inner Harbor, Syracuse

The Inner Harbor is a former industrial quarter of Syracuse, New York, situated at the center of a larger district long colloquially known as Oil City, and since 1989 rebranded as the Lakefront.

[1] At that time, the phrase "Inner Harbor" was borrowed from Baltimore, Maryland, and first applied in Syracuse when Robert Congel of The Pyramid Companies drafted a district-wide framework with then-Syracuse Mayor Thomas G. Young for the gradual, public-private transformation of all of Oil City.

Some of the fossil fuel tank farms were relocated under the city's eminent domain pressure to a new campus in the Town of Van Buren, off Herman Road, near the Thruway.

At the start, the Inner Harbor's only organic, native activity of any note was serving as home base for a substantial state canal maintenance facility, which historically included state-operated manufacture of its own fleet of various work boats.

Up to 60,000 cubic yards of sediment were allowed to slowly settle out from a slurry pumped into a system of dikes established alongside Van Rensselaer south of West Hiawatha.

[3] From about 2001 onward, New York State spent about $15 million upgrading its piers, building the harbor master’s station, and making other improvements -- all in hopes that the work would ultimately draw some kind of economic interest to the waterfront.

In 2011, the state Thruway Authority and its subsidiary Canal Corporation agreed to transfer 34 acres surrounding the Inner Harbor to the City of Syracuse, subject to certain conditions.

In 2012, Cor Development Co. based in Fayetteville, NY, was chosen on the strength of a $350 million proposal to turn the area into a residential, hotel, retail, and office center over the course of what was then said to be five to ten years.

[5] The project soon hit two significant delays: A legal dispute over tax breaks with Stephanie Miner's mayoral administration, which the city ultimately lost; and a federal corruption prosecution over state bid-rigging allegations unrelated to Inner Harbor, a case in which two Cor executives were eventually found guilty but are now appealing.

BHG's building, parking, and grounds will generally be sited south across West Kirkpatrick from the Aloft Hotel on six acres that formerly hosted a school bus company.