Jason Evans says he sees the potential in Syracuse, and he has plenty of ideas to make the city he was born and raised in, even better.
"I have all these ideas that are dancing around my head, and it's so much fun to have them in print in the magazine or online on the website," he said.
Evans is an architect, born and raised in Syracuse and the blogger behind RethinkSyracuse.com, a site that focuses on improving Syracuse by transforming old buildings and rundown neighborhoods. One picture recently published in Syracuse Magazine's "imagine this" series, shows a street car traveling down the center of a spruced up Salina Street. Bringing people from one side of the city to the other.
"I work on Salina Street, I'm downtown all the time. I've been to other cities where they have street cars, they drastically improve the scenery, the land values and the desirability of the city," said Evans. There are even old rail lines underneath Salina Street that were paved over decades ago."A street car line is by no means the silver bullet for reinvestment along Salina Street, but it is an effective revitalization tool in other cities and can certainly give our main street a strong push in the right direction," Evans' writes on his website.
Evans also pictures art in the windows of the Loews Building on South Salina, making a vacant store front feel not so empty.
And just a few blocks to the west there is a different vision for a different neighborhood. On West Street, there is a vision to take out some of the 8 travel lanes, put in sidewalks, a bike path and clear spots for people to park along the side of the road, creating a more inviting place for people to visit.
"This could be the new happening place, where developers want to build, want to renovate the buildings," said Evans.
In his blog he writes, "With a relatively modest reconfiguration along these lines, what is now the anti-urban can become a part of the city fabric once again. Sidewalks, stoplights, and crosswalks would allow pedestrians to move along and across West Street, allowing the vibrancy of Armory Square to be connected to and combined with the fledgling Near West Side Salt District."
But the big question is how can these ideas become a reality? Evans is hoping to tap into the people in this city who believe in it's potential. "Sometimes it's the lack of an idea, sometimes it's the lack of willingness to get the ball rolling and sometimes it's the lack of money but it's really about getting everybody working together," he said. "I think there is a lot of energy here, a lot of young people and even not so young people who are interested in improving this city."
How would you improve Sryacuse? Would you travel on a street car if one went right Salina Street?
