Six design standouts helping the city shine

A historic bungalow. A new sidewalk. One of the tallest buildings in the city skyline. As diverse as they are, these projects have one thing in common: they are winners of the 2023 Susan Blumenthal Pride of Ownership Awards. The awards committee recently announced this year’s winning projects, and the selected properties are all standouts of design in their own ways.

The annual awards, recognizing the owners of properties within the city who have developed projects or taken care of their properties in ways that enhance the physical appearance of city neighborhoods and commercial areas, is a joint project of the Ithaca Rotary Club and the city of Ithaca.

Their list of six winners, featured here in no particular order, tells the story of each property beyond what meets the eye.

The C.A.R.S Mural

The new mural adorning Cayuga Addiction Recovery Services (C.A.R.S.) tells a simple but powerful story with its colorful depiction of empathy and redemption.

“It really tells a positive story of recovery, which is really nice to be able to show,” said Brad Walworth, communications manager for C.A.R.S. “The mural itself, you just see the diversity there. There’s that growth there. There’s a connection to the broader community. Tompkins County is not just Ithaca, so it’s reaching out to those other communities; it’s rural.”

Located on the C.A.R.S building at 334 W. State St. in downtown Ithaca, the mural spans 160 feet of Plain Street on a formerly drab, gray wall. 

“It didn’t look like it really fit in,” Walworth said of the building before it was painted. “It didn’t fit the image that we wanted to present.”

The center at the corner of Plain and State Streets is part of a system of residential and outpatient facilities operated by C.A.R.S., which serves Tompkins and several surrounding counties.

The mural project resulted from a collaboration between C.A.R.S. staff, Ithaca Murals and two Philadelphia-based artists, Betsy Casañas and Mauricio Peréz. 

Katarina Wehemeyer, nurse manager at C.A.R.S., initially reached out to Ithaca Murals’ founder and facilitator Caleb Thomas for help in both beautifying the neighborhood and conveying the important mission of the organization to “transform lives and the community with flexible and inclusive person-centered treatment,” according to a Blumenthal Awards press release.

Thomas approached Casañas, an accomplished muralist with three decades of experience, who immediately asked Peréz, an artist who works primarily in papier-mâché, to join her on the project.

“The community spirit behind the creation of the mural echoes the collective effort at the center of the recovery process,” the awards press release said.

“I see it as involving the whole community,” Walworth said. “On the left side, you have the person healing the other person and helping them out in possibly an earlier stage of recovery, and then you see butterflies being released from the hand, and it speaks so well to that transformative experience of recovery. It’s a journey.”

As Thomas noted at the ribbon-cutting for the installation, “the theme of this mural is that the opposite of addiction is connection.”

The Ithacan 

The Ithacan, a 14-story residential tower owned by Jeff Rimland of Green Street Development Partners, LLC, has made a mark on Ithaca’s skyline and increased the city’s supply of housing for a wide range of residents at different income levels.

The 200-unit tower, located at 210 E. Green St., features a combination of studio, one-bedroom and two-bedroom apartments. It provides working Ithacans and students a new home in downtown, with 10% of units leased affordably to households with 80% of area median income and a number of other units offered at a discount to Ithaca College students participating in the college’s two-year physician’s assistant program.

Residential amenities include a rooftop terrace and fitness center, and the property also features a three-story parking garage, with the second and third stories reserved for public parking.

 “It really is an experience, not just a place to come home to every night,” said Emma Hans, community manager for the Ithacan.

The Ithacan’s simple shape minimizes the exterior walls exposed to the elements, and the 30% window-to-wall ratio helps reduce energy demand. All residential units and commons areas use electric air-source heat pumps and LED fixtures, and the roof was designed to accommodate the potential future installation of solar panels.  

“Probably what stands out to residents is that it is electric, so there’s no gas at all,” Hans said. “Everything is energy efficient. All the windows are triple-paned glass, and the building is all steel and concrete, not wood, so that minimizes sounds between units, but it’s also great for heating and cooling.”

The property provides an interior pedestrian connection from its lobby on Green Street to the Ithaca Commons via the Rothschild Building, the façade of which was also upgraded, “making a beautiful contribution to the Ithaca Commons,” the awards committee said of the property, adding, “Roland Architecture and CHA Consulting designed the building with elegance, simplicity, and energy efficiency in mind.… It stands alongside its new neighbors Harold’s Square, City Center, and Asteri Ithaca, positively marking the skyline of our small but growing city.”

“We have over 200 residents, and it’s nice to see the camaraderie between professors and attorneys, people who work at the colleges and people in grad school,” Hans said, adding that there are a few retirees as well. “It’s a little community.”

East State Street/MLK, Jr. Street sidewalk and street rebuild: 400-600 blocks

In 2023, the city of Ithaca’s Department of Public Works executed a project to rebuild the sidewalk and its connection to the existing stone retaining wall and street.  

“The result is a surprisingly delightful new pedestrian experience,” stated the press release for the awards. “The elevated walk has been transformed with a new sidewalk, board-formed concrete retaining wall, and black vertical-baluster metal railing. The board-formed concrete retaining wall facing the street has an interesting pattern which complements the texture of the existing stone retaining wall above.”

The announcement of the winning properties also noted the new railing, which “looks sharp throughout the day and creates a series of playful shadows, animating the sidewalk and creating a dynamic visual experience.”

With a thoughtful combination of materials, the Department of Public Works created a safer roadway leading to downtown.

1322 East State Street ravine and Hillside Garden

1322 East State St., owned by Gail and Nathan Lyman, lies at the southeast corner of the city on state Route 79 and is the first property travelers see when they enter Ithaca from that direction.  

A ravine runs through the steep lot, and over the years periodic floods have caused the banks to move and stone retaining walls to collapse, threatening the side yard and potentially the house.

Gail and Nathan Lyman bought the property in 2007 and have steadily made improvements, including exterior restoration and painting, a Tudor-style garage and numerous gardens, one including a waterfall and fish pond. But the most visible project came in 2022, with the removal of an existing concrete patio, rebuilding of the lower end of the ravine near the road, reinforcing the west side of the ravine with stone to protect the existing bank, managing the groundwater around the house and expanding the gardens.

In 2023 the Lymans’ Hillside Garden was featured by the Garden Conservancy, including an education program discussing hillside drainage and wall construction by the contractor, Elrik McCheyne of GreenScene. 

601 Hudson Street new porch and façade improvements

This 1926 bungalow was given a much-need exterior renovation by owners Jessica and Scott Stratton.

Once characterized by mismatched additions, peeling paint and what the Blumenthal organization described as an “uninviting” porch, the building is now a modern home that stands out on its quiet street.

The once-unfriendly porch was rebuilt and modernized with black and metal balustrades, and the new wood was painted a golden yellow-orange.

After replacing windows and refurbishing the front door, the entire exterior façade was painted “Iron Ore,” a very dark gray. The original posts were reused and encased in new wood.

The owners replaced all of the gutters with faux copper ones, as they wanted them to stay copper colored and not become patinated. New wood siding was added to the garage and painted to match the house. 

“The property now is a harmonized whole with an eye-catching front porch, a lovely punctuation to the neighborhood,” the press release by the awards team stated.

Marketview Apartments

Among the many elements of the new Cayuga Park, a mixed-use development in Ithaca’s evolving Waterfront District, Marketview Apartments, owned by Park Grove Realty in partnership with Demarco Construction and Cayuga Health, sets a new bar for affordable, accessible housing.

Marketview Apartments, located at 102 Cayuga Park Lane, is a 42-unit building designed for working families that overlooks the Ithaca Farmer’s Market and the Cayuga Lake Inlet.

A shared community room and access to the adjacent Ithaca Community Gardens complement individual private patios and attached balconies for each apartment. 

The building’s design marries human-scale massing with an elegant color scheme of watery blues and is a useful example of how conscientious and mission-driven developers like Park Grove Realty and their architect Passero can build affordably without compromising architectural integrity, the judges found, saying, “It is no easy feat, but everyone deserves to live in a well-built and attractive home, no matter their income or status, and this basic tenet drove every decision the development and design team made along the five-year project.”

Whitham Planning Design and Landscape Architecture led the development’s entitlements process and site planning and design. 

More than just an opportunity to mitigate the shortage of affordable housing options in Ithaca, Marketview Apartments also seeks to bring the best of what Ithaca has to offer to hardworking families who have had difficulty in finding housing. The project was fully leased on the second day of availability.