The future of I-81

I-81 construction

Years before President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s Interstate Highway System spread across American cities and eventually through Syracuse, the city’s 15th Ward was a vibrant, diverse community. Within it were high- and low-income residents, white and black neighbors and the city’s first black dentist.

But in the 1950s and ’60s, the largely African-American community was razed to make way for an elevated interstate highway that would displace nearly 1,300 residents to the South Side. Whites took to the suburbs, leaving abandoned buildings in their wake.

“No one asked the community what it wanted when I-81 was built 50 years ago,” said James D’Agostino, director of the Syracuse Metropolitan Transportation Council, the organization responsible for Onondaga County’s transportation planning.

Walking underneath the I-81 viaduct

Today, portions of Interstate-81, the expressway that cuts through Syracuse, are nearing the end of their lifespan. The visibly decaying viaduct, the 1.4-mile elevated strip, prompted the transportation council and the New York State Department of Transportation to launch The I-81 Challenge, a public outreach campaign to address the future of I-81 in the next decade.

Images via The I-81 Challenge blog.

Foot soldiers

Photos by Andrew Renneisen (via The Daily Orange)

Part 3 of 3: Every year, the Syracuse community gathers in the Carrier Dome to celebrate cancer survivors, honor loved ones lost to the disease and fight back to end cancer. Part Three of this series acknowledges those who fight for the cure.

The abnormal cells grow uncontrollably. They first arrive innocently enough, manifesting themselves as an unusual lump barely worth mentioning. Or a cough that lasts a little too long. Or a bruise that, for some reason, just hasn’t gone away.

The cells spread, invading other parts of the body, destroying tissues in their way. They might travel through a lymph or hide in a white blood cell. Eventually, they announce themselves by ravaging the body they’ve invaded. Too often, they end a life.

Not everyone is willing to sit back and watch.

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In memoriam

Part 2 of 3: Every year, the Syracuse community gathers in the Carrier Dome to celebrate cancer survivors, honor loved ones lost to the disease and fight back to end cancer. Part Two of this series explores the ways in which SU honors, mourns and remembers the fallen.

Typically, one mourns alone. Behind closed doors and under covers, you can hide the raw grief that demands release. The tears that escape honor your grandmother, your great aunt, your father, your loveable Rottweiler, your best friend.

One night of the year in the Carrier Dome, members of the Syracuse community grieve together. They openly share their vulnerability in a ceremony of remembrance for their lost loved ones. No closed doors or covers are needed.

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Day by day

Photo courtesy of Haley Buchan

Part 1 of 3: Every year, the Syracuse community gathers in the Carrier Dome to celebrate cancer survivors, honor loved ones lost to the disease and fight to end cancer. Part One of this series serves to celebrate one of SU’s own survivors.

There’s a feeling that grows as you near the light at the end of the tunnel. The sigh of relief you know will escape your overwhelmed body when you reach your journey’s promising end. “Everything’s going to be OK,” it whispers.

Heather Buchan saw the light in December. And by the end of the month, the Syracuse University freshman would see it disappear the moment her doctor delivered the news: Her cancer had returned.

Nothing could prepare anyone for that. But Buchan learned the day she was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma at 16 that there was never any certainty to living with cancer, and there was no certainty to living without it.

Saving the haven

Dunbar's impact on the community is shown in the news. © Bethany Bump

Preston Fagan knew African-Americans who would walk down to the Onondaga County Office Building in Syracuse to sign up for social services. Many would get there, and turn around at the last minute without going in for the food stamps, day care or medical assistance they needed. The problem, he said, was they felt stigmatized.

“Whenever they went down there, they felt people thought they were only there to get welfare or to do some begging,” he said.

That’s why the Dunbar Center on South State Street is so vital to the community, said Fagan, who served as president of the 92-year-old nonprofit’s board of directors on and off from the 1980s until 2003. No one feared being unfairly judged at Dunbar, he said, because the center provided so many varied services.

With Dunbar currently facing a major funding cut and administrative reshuffling, alumni have rallied to support the center and its historical roots in the community.

Preserving Dunbar

Adalsa Latty points out the window of his ground-floor office at the Dunbar Center. A snow-speckled South State Street outside is cracked and rundown, cutting through a struggling neighborhood. He drops his hands in despair. He sighs with the force of someone exhausted after a long battle.

“Sometimes when you come here, you see cars lined up from here down to the next block,” Latty says, looking out the window. “They come for service. They get service. I don’t think anybody has ever come here for help and they don’t get it.”

The Dunbar Center is located at 1453 S. State St. in Syracuse, NY. © Bethany Bump

Read the rest of this story I wrote for The Stand, a monthly newspaper covering Syracuse’s South Side. I’ll update soon with another story about how Dunbar’s alumni feel about keeping the center running.