Owner works to bring old Syracuse factory -- home for artists, musicians -- into compliance

Inspectors in May found the building in violation. Repairs made to allow tenants to move back into the first floor.

Syracuse, NY -- On a first floor wall of The Gear Factory, building owner Rick DeStito hung architectural drawings of how he planned to develop all six floors, plans based on input from the artists, musicians and other tenants.

“Push restart,” DeStito said earlier this month, looking at the now obsolete vision.

The Gear Factory is a big white building at South Geddes and West Fayette streets that DeStito bought a few years ago to redevelop as workspace for artists and musicians.

The building became an emblem of the local effort to attract young people to Syracuse and to revitalize the long-struggling Near West Side. DeStito has a scrapbook of dozens of media stories about him, his building or the artists who leased space there.

But DeStito, 33, shuttered the place May 9 after a city inspection revealed serious code violations, mostly fire-related problems, for instance no alarm or sprinkler system and illegally occupied space on the upper floors, according to City Hall.

The building was fully occupied by roughly 25 artists, musicians and other tenants, DeStito said. Since then, he has been working with the city to bring the building back to life, floor by floor, without income from tenants.

Last week, his improvements to the first floor paid off. He said the city inspected it and issued him a certificate of compliance. As of Monday, artists and musicians were getting ready to get back to work in the 10 first floor studios, said DeStito, who was waiting for the paperwork from the city to arrive in the mail.

It’s a start, but DeStito said his financial condition is still precarious. He needs to get more of the building occupied and is working with an architect to find a way to develop 25 to 30 more studios in the basement.

“I’m just trying to make the numbers work,” he said.

He bought building about five years ago, for about $144,000, when he was 27. DeStito said he tried to talk a few other people into investing with him, but they didn’t bite so he did it on his own.

To DeStito, the building was in a great location, between the prosperity of Tipp Hill and Armory Square. He’d spent three years traveling the country looking for a better place to live because he didn’t like it here. He said he decided to come back to make the city a place where young people like him would want to live. All the great places he’d seen during his travels were vibrant, with arts, music and people walking the streets where they lived and worked, he said.

That’s the kind of vibrancy he wanted to create at The Gear Factory.

Bill Moldt said his band, The Pilot Lies, hasn’t found a place to practice since it had to leave the building.

“You’d hear other bands playing, you’d talk to other musicians in the common spaces or you’d come across an artist creating an installation,” he said. There were all kinds of artists, writers and filmmakers around, and it was different people each time you were there, he said.

“The creative environment was amazing,” Moldt said.

He said his band would move back into the building if it could.

DeStito said he takes full responsibility for the violations and is working with the city and an architect to correct them, one floor at a time. The city inspected the building after getting a complaint and found the violations. Now it is supporting DeStito’s efforts to make the building safe, said Ben Walsh, city deputy commissioner of neighborhood and business development. He said he has known DeStito since he bought the building, first when Walsh worked for the former Metropolitan Development Association and then at City Hall. “And my take on Rick is he is exactly the kind of person that we want to encourage to invest in the city and to do business in the city.” Walsh said. “He’s a young, energetic, creative guy and he has really a vision for not only his building but the surrounding neighborhood and I think we want to be supportive of that vision.” DeStito has become part of the fabric of the neighborhood. He was the first to buy a dollar house as part of the Near Westside Initiative and is renovating it to move into with his wife and young child. He is part of new business association forming under the initiative umbrella. Among other things, he’s active in Tomorrow’s Neighborhoods Today and Lipe Art Park on West Fayette Street, near his building. DeStito said he is scrambling to come up with the money he needs to keep The Gear Factory afloat. He is a one-man developer who said he is pretty much on his own financially, although he has had lots of help from his family, friends and tenants. “Sometimes you want to give up. but you don’t, you know?” he said. “I read this line one time before — it’s like you read a whole book and there’s this one line that sticks out, it makes the whole book worth it — that the things we care about have to be more important than the things we’re afraid of, the things we care about have to become more important than what we’re afraid of.” Contact Maureen Nolan 470-2185 or mnolan@syracuse.com