Local developer Rick Destito gets a nice mention in the NY Times

Last month, reporter Maureen Nolan wrote about Rick Destito's effort to renovate The Gear Factory, a big white building at South Geddes and West Fayette streets and turn it into a workspace for artists and musicians. Today, the New York Times published online a story titled "Rebirth of a City," which describes Destito's work in rebuilding a three-story Victorian...

View full sizeDick Blume/The Post StandardRick DeStito, a local developer working to rehabilitate properties in Syracuse.

Last month, reporter Maureen Nolan wrote about Rick Destito's effort to renovate The Gear Factory, a big white building at South Geddes and West Fayette streets and turn it into a workspace for artists and musicians.

Today, the New York Times published online a story titled "Rebirth of a City," which describes Destito's work in rebuilding a three-story Victorian in one of the poorest neighborhoods of Syracuse. It also talks about other homes being renovated by local folks.

Here's an excerpt:

Built in the 1890s but left abandoned for years, the place was in serious disrepair: graffiti and mold stained the exterior, the windows were gone and the roof needed to be replaced. But under an innovative local housing program, he paid only a dollar for the place — plus another $60,000, and his own skilled labor, to make it suitable for his family, including a one-year old girl and a baby on the way.

For decades, people like Mr. Destito — young, skilled, motivated — were exactly the sort who left Rust Belt cities like Syracuse. But recently, in numbers not yet statistically measurable but clearly evident at the ground level, they’ve been coming back to the city, first as a trickle, and now by the hundreds. In some ways it’s a part of the natural ebb and flow of urban demographics. But it is also the result of a new attitude among the city’s leadership, one that admits the failure of the re-industrialization efforts of the last decades and instead invents ways to attract new types of residents and keep current ones from leaving. Call it urban renewal 2.0, gentrification on a citywide scale.

» Read the full story by Roberta Brandes Gratz: Rebirth of a City

» Read other stories about Rick Destito on syracuse.com.

» Do you know of other homes being renovated in the city of Syracuse? Drop us a note at citynews@syracuse.com.