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What’s
Your Destiny?
I’ve
been told by reliable sources that Robert Congel has a summer
house in Skaneateles.
In case you haven’t heard of or don’t know much about Skaneateles,
it’s a village in central New York state on the tip of a lake
bearing the same name, situated about 20 miles southwest of
Syracuse. Part small town, part suburb and part tourist destination,
it’s a handsome village full of restored historic buildings
housing small, locally owned shops, galleries and restaurants,
where people gather to shop and eat but also to stroll on
the plentiful sidewalks, rest on benches or make use of bike
and jogging paths and well-kept parks. In short, the village
of Skaneateles is historic, walkable, human-scale—and because
of that, attractive to residents, visitors and entrepreneurs
alike.
Oh, and the town of Skaneateles has an interesting little
rule governing development within its borders: a zoning restriction
limiting retail stores to no more than 45,000 square feet
and shopping-center sites to no more than 15 acres.
In case you haven’t heard of Robert Congel, he’s the founder
and CEO of Pyramid, the corporation that builds very large
enclosed malls, one of them being Crossgates Mall in Guilderland.
Pyramid also built the Carousel Center shopping mall in Syracuse,
which Congel now wants to triple in size, creating the largest
mall/resort/hotel in North America. “Destiny USA” would cover
13 million square feet, or about 300 acres. And its scope
would far exceed that of your average, run-of-the-mill enclosed
shopping complex: Destiny would feature the expected retail
stores (400) and restaurants (30) but also a 100-acre enclosed
park, a six-story rock- and ice-climbing wall, theaters to
accommodate Broadway and fashion shows, 20,000 hotel rooms,
and what the Web site describes as the “world’s largest marine
life experience.”
Plans for Destiny USA currently are on hold, because during
the legislative session that ended last week, the New York
State Legislature failed to act on state guarantees Pyramid
had sought, which would have brought the developer up to $52
million a year in tax credits. Pyramid still has a shot at
getting its share of the corporate-welfare pie if the Legislature
decides to return for a special session later in the year,
but just in case state lawmakers think Congel and co. are
going to take last week’s insult lying down, they’ve already
dropped loud hints that if New York doesn’t ante up soon,
they might just take their $2.2 billion project and thousands
of new jobs to Massachusetts or Pennsylvania.
What amuses me most about all of this is not the absurd scale
of the project, the idea that families by the thousands will
flock to such a place for vacations, the amount of cash Pyramid
already has dropped on its so-far-unsuccessful lobbying efforts,
or even the fact that the project’s name sounds like a stripper.
No, it’s the fact that Destiny is being pitched by Pyramid,
touted by supporters and portrayed in the media as the solution
to central New York’s economic woes.
Now I’ll be the first to admit that my crystal ball isn’t
any better than anyone else’s. And god knows you can never
underestimate the possibility that hordes of people will flock
to Destiny simply because it’s bigger than anything they’ve
ever seen. But it does make me wonder what kind of community
Syracuse wants to be—or maybe I should say, what kind of community
Robert Congel wants Syracuse to be. Because if Destiny is
built, and if it is even remotely successful, Syracuse will
become, more so than it already may be, a community of chain
stores and chain restaurants and prefab entertainment and
cars, cars, cars, as far as the eye can see.
Recently, I became interested in a book that came out a year
or so ago, Richard Florida’s The Rise of the Creative Class,
and the theories the author has been developing, particularly
around the issue of how communities try to improve their short-
and long-term economic prospects. One of Florida’s main points
is that many of the people who hold sway over urban planning
don’t understand the significant shifts that have taken place
in the American workforce over the last several decades and
what they might mean for a city’s long-term vitality. Specifically,
he details the significant increase in the percentage of the
workforce who work in occupations that fall under his broad
umbrella of creativity: artists, musicians and writers, of
course, but also many educators, editors, software designers,
new-economy entrepreneurs, etc.—in short, anyone working on
the development of new ideas and new technologies.
As this class rises and the manufacturing class declines,
Florida argues, the old paradigms of economic development
may no longer function the way old-school elected officials,
planners and developers think they will. For example, if you
dangle money in front of a company so they’ll come to your
city and build something big—a factory, a mall, an entertainment
complex complete with IMAX theater, brew pub, etc.—you might
get an initial boost in the local economy, only to wind up
scratching your heads a few years later when the new development(s)
fail to change the character of the city, spur more growth
and/or reverse the trend of creative people leaving the city
for someplace that has more to offer than malls, chain restaurants
and brew pubs.
What Florida has found is that the members of the growing
creative class gravitate toward places that reward their thirst
for diversity, unique local culture, thriving arts, aesthetically
pleasing neighborhoods and architecture, and the company of
like-minded people—and in turn add to those places’ vibrancy
with their own creative contributions. Cities that lack these
qualities likely will lose some of their brightest and most
energetic young adults to more interesting cities, but also—and
Florida already has begun to document this—will lose whole
companies whose leaders have realized that they can find and
keep better employees in places where the creative class congregates.
If Florida is on to something, then Congel and the supporters
of Destiny are not. A huge shopping mall with hundreds of
chain stores and restaurants and 20,000 hotel rooms surrounded
by acres of parking lots and connector roads will not help
to make Syracuse the kind of place that creative people will
flock to—quite the opposite, it will help make Syracuse the
kind of place creative people flee.
All of that probably matters little to Bob Congel, who doesn’t
live in Syracuse. And besides, whenever he really needs to
kick back, he can relax at his summer home in Skaneateles,
whose quality of life, he can rest assured, will never be
threatened by enormous shopping malls.
—Stephen
Leon
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