(lively music) - Thank you all so much for coming out tonight.

Last year, I started thinking about this idea of doing a live tour, we're calling the Highway Tear Down Tour.

And I reached out to a handful of experts, people who, you know, follow highway issues.

And I remember one of the first conversations I had was like, where should I go?"

And they're like, "Well, I mean, you should just go barnstorm upstate New York.

Like you just gotta go across the whole state 'cause there is so much going on out here when it comes to the future of highways and how we think about these pieces of infrastructure."

So truly, I'm so glad to be here.

Joining me for that conversation.

We're gonna take this kind of in two parts tonight.

We're gonna start by looking at the past, how we got here, and then we're gonna turn to what's going on right now, because there's some really interesting questions around the highways of Rochester playing out right now.

So for that first part, we have with us Brian Sharp, a reporter with WXXI right here who covers business and development, as well as Erik Frisch, commissioner of Neighborhood and Business Development for the City of Rochester.

Give it up.

(audience applauds) So Erik, I'm hoping you can take me back in time about 20 years.

It's 2007.

You've just taken a job here with the city of Rochester, and you find this idea that's up on the shelf, kind of a radical idea of removing what people here call the Inner Loop.

What did you think?

- Got pretty personal there.

You knew when I started at the city.

That's impressive.

Yeah.

So when I was hired at the city, it was really a blessing for me to walk in to a situation where I had the opportunity as a young transportation planner, city planner where the city had a project on the books to move on.

- And you're like, fresh out of college?

- I had spent- - Not to date yourself, but.

- I had spent five years at the Genesee Transportation Council, which is the regional transportation planning body before- - So you cut your teeth a little bit, but you were young and hungry.

- That's right.

I was ready to go.

- And so this idea's on the shelf and?

- Yeah.

So the genesis of the idea came from 1990, a document called The Vision Plan for Downtown.

And the Vision 2000 Plan for Downtown, if I'm not mistaken.

And the idea was to take that southeastly section of the highway that we still know as the Inner Loop and simply bring it up to grade as a boulevard and create some land for development.

So you could say that we were well ahead of our time, right, thinking about this that many years prior.

And over the ensuing years, it became something that was featured in every planning document that was produced by the city or by other organizations kind of on behalf of the city.

It became something that was socialized enough that became, I think, pretty widely accepted that this will happen someday.

Just need the money.

- So it wasn't socialized as a, oh yeah, dream on.

It was socialized as, okay, this feels more and more doable.

- Well I mean, this is Rochester.

It's a place that doesn't necessarily believe in doing big things or that we can do big things.

But this was an opportunity where we could.

And, you know, we had a lot of support.

Our congressperson at the time was Louise Slaughter.

She was very influential in Washington and very strong supporter of the project and just needed that leadership to align across local, regional, state, and federal levels to see this project happen.

- Yeah.

It's a good reminder.

Sometimes you see these, like, Vision 20 whatever document, and it kind of feels like, well, that's just a lot of talk.

But sometimes it takes talk for 10, 20 years to kinda lay that slow groundwork like this.

- Yeah, that's right.

And again, it was a benefit for me walking into this.

You know, I wasn't the project manager.

I was just a junior planner, right?

So but to have these years and years of conversation about this concept, having funding to actually get into it made it all that much more likely that it was gonna happen.

And, you know, as we've had conversations with other communities over the years, I always tell them, "Hopefully, this won't take you 25 years to go from where you are today to where you wanna be."

- But if it does, be prepared for it.

- Exactly.

- So Brian, by coincidence, you started reporting here in Rochester around that same time, if I'm right.

- Yeah, 2005.

- In the 2000s.

Was it on your radar?

- I think we started hearing about it downtown.

At that point was really starting to go through a transformation.

And the Inner Loop section that they're talking about, it's like 2/3 of a mile was the east end.

Sunken highway, bridges across for all the main streets, and they referred to as a moat.

Because there was a active east end and there was downtown that was trying to get kind of its mojo back.

And they wanted to connect those.

I think one of the folks at the time referred to as stitching the fabric back together.

And so yeah, and I remember, but yeah, just as you were talking, remembering, I think the press conference finally when the funding was there was in a parking lot beside a road, beside the moat, that was beside another road that was then downtown.

- Wow.

So let's talk a little bit about the road itself.

I'm sure for many of you here, you know it well.

For some folks who will listen to this later, maybe less well.

So the Inner Loop, as the name suggests, it's a kind of a loop right around downtown.

Why was this possibility even a possibility?

Like the idea of getting rid of this highway, turning it into more of a surface street.

What is it about this road?

- Yeah, yeah.

Well, one good question would be why was it ever built in the first place?

But, you know, this was a circumferential ring road placed around downtown Rochester.

Lots of different ideas for why it was built and why it was designed the way it was.

All we knew is it didn't take long for people to start talking about how this road was actually holding the city back.

How it was encouraging disinvestment and facilitating flight.

And this particular section of the highway, this easterly section also never lived up to the expectations, if you can call them that.

It was designed to be a highway with high traffic volumes.

It never did, right?

Other highways that were built or intended to be built to connect to it were never built, thank goodness.

That would've decimated the south side of the city of Rochester.

And so this facility did not carry a significant traffic volume and did not serve a significant purpose.

- Yeah.

I feel like with all these highway debates around the country, there's always this push and pull between the actual utility the road provides and the harm it has done and continues to do to just the social fabric of the city.

And it seems like in this case, it was a pretty strong case of high harm, low utility relative to other highways around here at least.

- Oh, absolutely.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Almost no real purpose.

The traffic volumes were about 7,000 cars a day, seven to 10,000 cars a day.

It was a six-lane sunken highway flanked by two to three lane frontage roads.

So as one overall facility, you know, you're talking 10 to 12 lanes of asphalt and retaining walls and all of those things separating the east side of the city, those close-end neighborhoods with the downtown.

- For comparison, we did another taping recently in New York City talking about the BQE sections of that road, which are not necessarily any bigger, carry 150,000 cars a day.

- That's right.

And that's what this was theoretically built to serve.

Right?

- Right.

- Large volumes of traffic.

And, you know, it never did that for a variety of reasons.

But one thing you could certainly point to is that there, there seems to be a bit of a coincidence there, right?

That this highway was built at the same time as the population of the city of Rochester began to decline.

- Yeah.

Truly, like, it was designed and built at the peak of the city's population.

- [Erik] That's right, yeah.

- And, at that moment, did it seem like, well, it's just going up and up and up like 50 years from now, this is gonna be like downtown Brooklyn?

Or was it just the planners at the time were just so on this track of build the highways, highways of the future, that they couldn't see around that curve of, maybe we're building for a city that's very different from this?

- Yeah, I think if you look at the population projections that were being produced at that time, it definitely called for no end in sight to population growth in this region.

In fact, I believe the 1960s were the fastest growth in terms of population in Monroe County.

Not in the city of Rochester.

- Interesting.

- That was the first decade that things population started to decline.

- So you take this idea off the shelf, and as I understand it, one of the challenges of this kind of project is that it's sort of a transportation project in that it involves a road, but it's really more of like an urban redevelopment project.

And, you know, my background is in the Big Dig in Boston.

They ran into this constantly with the feds, with the Federal Highway Administration who would say, "This isn't a highway project.

This is an urban beautification project.

What are you doing here?"

How did you approach that?

Where you really are trying to get rid of road capacity, get rid of car capacity.

How did you get funding for it?

- Yeah, it was the same conversation here.

You know, we had to secure funds from you know, earmarks from Congress.

- Like get it written into the legislation?

- That's right.

For those early phases to actually get into in-depth studies and early phases of design.

And as we proceeded through that design process, we were told repeatedly, "As a transportation project, no.

It's meeting its transportation purpose."

So we had to convince the state DOT and the Federal Highway Administration that this can advance as a community development project.

And so regionally, while there was support to advance the project, there was not support to use regional transportation funds to advance the project.

So it wasn't until the Obama administration came in with the TIGER Program which was a product of the stimulus era.

- Is there an acronym in there?

- TIGER was Transportation Investments Generating Economic Recovery.

It's burned into my memory bank.

(audience laughs) It had a nice TIGER logo on it, it was wonderful.

And that created a new opportunity that really hadn't existed before for a transportation department-funded program focused on this very type of project, doing something different with transportation infrastructure.

- I was gonna say, and correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm trying to remember back to that, but I think one of the selling points also was along here were several bridges that were getting toward the end of their useful life.

And the argument was it's gonna be cheaper to take everything out than to replace and fix all those bridges.

- Yeah, that's right.

- To maintain it.

- Yeah, when we get in the justification of the project, we also have to speak the language of the, you know, the traffic engineers and bureaucrats who are reviewing these projects, right?

So one of them, of course, was to conduct a benefit-cost analysis, which any good project would follow.

Which did demonstrate among other things that the cost to maintain the infrastructure that existed was far higher than the cost to remove it all and wouldn't have produced any of the other benefits that would come with removing the highway and recreating a neighborhood.

- Yeah.

You apply for the TIGER grant.

Take me to the day that you find out.

- Well, it took a few years.

We applied three times before we got it.

The first time was me in my spare time, filling out an application at my at my desk.

The third time, 2013, right around the time of my birthday, I remember that pretty vividly being a nice present 'cause I had worked pretty hard on this thing at that point.

And so when the news broke, I can remember jumping around the office and being told to keep it down.

(audience laughs) - Really?

They weren't all celebrating with you.

They were like, "What's up with Erik?"

"Oh, he got some money for his little pet project."

- Exactly.

I had to explain why I was dancing and knocking things over, yeah.

- Within the city government, was it a priority that there were a lot of resources behind getting this grant?

Or was it kind of, "Well, if you can find the money, we'll do it."

- So getting back to that point I made earlier about the various champions and leadership aligning, we needed some time for that to happen.

And part of that, I think, was inside of city government, there needed to be a push.

We had the dollars in place.

Let's use them.

Let's get into this.

Let's move this forward.

This is a good idea.

It's been around for 20 years.

Let's dig into this and produce concepts and drawings that can really generate excitement.

It was the right time to do it.

We did that.

We got the support of the mayor.

We got the support of the county executive.

We got the support of the state.

Our congressional delegation and everything fell into place.

- So how did the TIGER money change the dynamic?

What happens then?

- So then, we are told that we have just over a year to go from preliminary design to construction drawings and get this project out to bid because there's a very short window that the funds are eligible.

So we had to, forgive me for saying, but we had to hit the gas and really get to work.

And so a project that had taken 20 plus years to get to that point now, a pretty complex design and engineering process had to be condensed in a pretty small window.

- And it was like use it or lose it if you don't hit that deadline.

- We had to do it, yes.

- The money is gone.

- There was no option.

So everybody agreed we're gonna get this done.

And that meant very consistent getting out, meeting with all the neighborhood groups and block clubs in the area, the major stakeholders the businesses, and making sure everybody is engaged, informed, buying into this project because there's no room for error.

- What were your working hours like in that year, that one year period?

- I was young and full of energy.

- [Ian] Did you have more hair then?

- I had a full head of hair, yeah.

(audience laughs) Thank you for the viewers at home can picture this.

- And is that partly to blame?

- Yeah, yeah, I think so.

But you know, that was well worth it.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

- Small price to pay.

- That's right.

- I'm trying to wrap my mind around the process of this project because it's not a tear down in the sense of, you know, you take, you know, welders into it and you just like bring down the steel structure.

It's a trench that you have to fill in.

So let's start with real basics.

Like where do you get the dirt?

- Great question.

So I believe the number when we designed it was about 153,000 cubic yards of clean fill that had to be brought in.

When we applied for the TIGER funds, and folks in the audience may remember this, we had another project that was ongoing at the same time up at the Port of Rochester to dig a new public marina up at the port.

And so at the time of the application, we linked the two together and said that we will we secured what's called a Beneficial Use Determination for the slag and other things that were up- - Interesting.

- That needed to be dug out of there so that we could propose to use it on the Inner Loop site.

Turns out we didn't ultimately do that.

I don't know if you folks knew that we didn't.

That went somewhere else.

The contractor procured the fill from elsewhere.

But yes, there were lots of trucks.

If folks can remember the mountains of fill that over time was brought in to fill the trench.

And all of the retaining walls had to be cut down to a certain degree, right?

So the first however many feet, someday, generations from now, somebody may dig and find the footings and foundations, you know, for those- - [Ian] It's still in there.

You didn't ti take out.

- It's still down there.

We had to go down, I think probably get the number wrong, but- - Wow.

- Eight feet.

- Is there asphalt under all that fill still?

- It had to all be rubberized, right?

For drainage and all that.

- [Ian] So that the water could get through it.

- That's right.

- But you didn't remove it.

You just, like, pulverized it.

And left it there.

- That's right.

- If only we were doing the Big Dig at the same time, it would've been like just a perfect one for one.

(audience laughs) Your trench.

- Straight down the 90.

- Yeah, our tunnel goes into your trench.

Actually, I think the fill from the Big Dig, like, went to a golf course or something.

Somewhere trying to landscape.

Brian, what did that look like?

Would you sort of go and watch the progress as the fill line just rose up?

- Yeah, you're reminding me of the mountains of dirt now.

And yeah, I mean, you know, we were reporting on this from the time they, you know, hung the signs over the Inner Loop.

You know, this would be closing at whatever day.

And then, yeah, just starting to see it.

And there were regular events.

I'm thinking of one, you know, Louise Slaughter had at one point.

And then we started following the development proposals that were coming out as folks lined up and they, you know, marked off.

There was there was fly-throughs that were done of like, you know, trying to imagine what this would look like in the future.

So, but that point of trying to describe it, I remember I worked at the local newspaper at the time and trying to describe, well, we're gonna fill it in and make an at-grade boulevard and take out the brim, which seemed very clear to me.

But I remember being like, people just still couldn't get it.

And so it sort of took the visualization of that.

- I mean, even like at grade is sort of like in transportation speak, yes, it means something, but in everyday speak, iffy boulevard, I think sort of means something to most people.

But yeah, it's hard to sort of capture what it is you're talking about.

Going from a highway to just a straight.

- And to say that like you're gonna have acres or whatever it was, hundred, how many acres, was that 110?

- No, I've got it over.

Acres that we developed?

Or that we created?

- Yeah.

- It created 6 1/2.

- 6 1/2, right.

I was way over.

But yeah, to describe that you're gonna take this highway out, create acres of development and put buildings on top of it took people, I think, a while to understand what that was going to, you know, look like again.

- Yeah.

There were streets that previously just would like dead end at the Inner Loop and were ultimately reconnected.

What was that like when people could actually start to go back and forth across what used to be a moat?

- Yeah, well, we immediately saw an increase in walking and biking in the area, right?

This was an area to avoid if you were a bicyclist or a pedestrian.

It was not very friendly.

And so as that highway infrastructure and the slip ramps and the frontage roads and everything was removed and we were able to reconnect the neighborhood with downtown, immediately started to see people out walking and biking before any of the development had taken place.

- Even when it was just open parcels, gravel and fencing and stuff.

- That's right.

- Because you maintained traffic through there too, right?

'Cause you had businesses all at one time.

- We moved all the traffic over, yeah, to the Union Street side.

- Somebody told me that the mayor drove across in a 1964 Mustang, which was the year, you know, of the last time that some of those traits were connected.

Were you there that day?

- Yeah, I was.

It was a- - [Ian] You're not in the back of the Mustang?

- I was not.

I wanted to be.

(audience laughs) That would've taken away, I think, from the- - You were in like the Toyota, two cars back in the motorcade.

- [Erik] I was on my bike.

- You're on your bike.

There you go.

- Yeah.

Yeah.

No, that was a great event.

You know, they drove on Charlotte Street when that was reconnected for the first time in, what, 60, nearly 50 years.

- What year is this?

20?

- Right now?

- No, sorry.

(audience laughs) That that was completed.

- We completed in 2018.

- 2018.

Wow.

So going back to our kind of mental timeline, 1990, first proposed, 2007 sitting on the shelf, 2010s, it gets funding.

2018, it's finally completed.

Did you feel like the work was done?

- Of course not.

No.

Well, for two reasons, right?

One, as Brian said, we created six and a half acres of land.

That meant that land had to be developed.

So there was an entire process related to the infill development of that land, which continues today.

And then there was a whole lot more Inner Loop left to go.

We wanna make it clear, you know, we had proposed as a city removing more of this Inner Loop than just the southeastern section that we ultimately did.

We could not get traction on that.

So rather than giving up and not doing a project, we kind of got everyone to agree that we could hit a pause on decisions related to the Inner Loop as it existed north of University Avenue and Main Street.

And go ahead with the project that we ultimately did.

We knew we would be successful and we would be able to use that success to parlay that into future conversations on Inner Loop North.

Here we are today.

- So you were always thinking of that eastern section that this is like the test phase.

- [Erik] Starting point, yeah.

- Starting point.

- It was the easiest part, right?

Again, because of those low traffic volumes, not much of a constituency of opposition to the project.

So let's go ahead, let's do what we know we can do.

Let's demonstrate that we can do it, that it's successful, and let's come back to that other conversation when we're done.

- What's so amazing about Rochester and the story is that you did the Inner Loop East, this project we've been talking about, but now you have this opportunity to keep going, to learn from what you did and do more.

And it seems like that's a rare thing.

You know, with the Big Dig, we did it, it was done.

There are a lot of things I think people wish they could do differently, and that moment has passed.

So to talk about this next phase of the project, we have with us Shawn Dunwoody and Suzanne Mayer, who are two board members of the group Hinge Neighbors.

So welcome, Shawn and Suzanne.

- Thank you.

- Glad to be here.

(audience applauds) - So I was excited to talk with you both tonight because you two live on opposite sides of the Inner Loop in two very different neighborhoods, and you've come together around this issue.

So I'm hoping that each of you can start by just describing your neighborhood, the place where you live.

And Shawn, maybe we could start with you.

- All right, we'll start with me.

I live north of the Inner Loop.

I actually grew up six streets.

Well, one, two, three, four, seven streets from where the Inner Loop is.

And used to throw rocks at cars from there when you cross it.

Or you play Frogger to make sure you don't get hit from the cars going by.

But- - You like run across it?

- Yeah, you gotta make sure.

It's like the Frogger game which make sure.

No, not physically, but you know, the bridge is just- - Oh, yeah.

- Okay.

Now, I ain't trying to kill myself.

And so living north of the Inner Loop, it's a different dynamic.

It's a poor neighborhood.

For those listening, you can't see.

You probably can tell I'm a Black dude.

But okay, so I'm a Black guy and Suzanne's a white lady.

So we look like what our neighborhoods, pretty much what our neighborhoods look like.

We try to represent that.

And so there is some differences in education.

There's some different in economics.

There's racial differences.

So when we got together, we always stand on the principle that we look like who we are.

We look like our neighborhoods, and we look how and who we want to represent in this move forward in Inner Loop North.

You know, we're the Ebony and Ivory of this project.

- Well, we moved into the city because we though it would be a great place to live and walk.

And as you can tell, I'm an old white woman.

He's nice enough not to say that, but it's a more wealthy neighborhood.

A lot of people who've come in from retiring want to have a place to be able to walk.

It's a walkable neighborhood.

It has access to all sorts of things like the theater, Jiva, the little theater.

Everything we want there is there.

And I think that my husband and I had always wanted to move back into the city because, well, we retired to Rochester.

In other words, we came to Rochester on July 7th, 1977.

And Rochester has been very good to us.

So he said, "We need to stay here and do a lot of things."

And that's what we are.

- Yeah.

So I took a walk through your neighborhoods today.

I was walking with somebody from the city historian department because Rochester has a city historian, which is wonderful.

And she was pointing out that, you know, if you go back far enough, I mean, these neighborhoods were not so different.

Like there was a big mix of, you know, immigrants and there was a convent here and different kinds of shops here and there.

And that the Inner Loop was built in this mid-century time period.

At the same moment when the demographics of the city were really changing, when you had this great migration from the South the African American population was swelling.

And so in some ways, that segregation that, you know, between the black neighborhoods and the whiter neighborhoods on either side of this highway kinda came about at the same time that, you know, it's not necessarily a direct product, but the highway was sort of part of creating this divide.

I'm curious for you, living there, I mean, were there people around who remembered it before the Inner Loop?

Do you hear those stories?

- There's still people there that I'd have to shout out Martin Pedraza.

He lives two streets away from there.

The Inner Loop starts on Silo Street.

He remembers delivering papers when the roads were connected.

And when they were digging it out he'd jump in the big puddles of water when it would rain and fill in inside the Inner Loop.

So yes, there are people that are still there that understand, that know that their ward was destroyed which affected their community.

And they saw the shift in their community as the migration happened.

As resources were pulled away from the community, as people left the commercial corridors, he saw these people can see the sort of demise or how the neighborhood was the left.

So they're still there.

They'll still tell you about it and it's good to learn.

It's a good lesson.

It's a good lesson.

- So as you start going out in your respective neighborhoods and talking to people about this idea of removing that barrier between them, what was the response?

- Well, it's gonna be pretty funny.

We actually went to a neighborhood meeting and we said, "The Inner Loop is coming."

And- - Meaning the Inner Loop removal is coming.

- [Suzanne] The removal, thank you very much.

- The Inner Loop is going.

- Going away.

And so we went on my neighborhood associations, a very strong neighborhood association.

And they said, some people said, "That is a terrible idea."

- [Speaker] Awful.

- Awful.

Why?

"Well, because how are we gonna get to the airport?

We can get to the airport in seven minutes."

It's a great place to live.

So, oh.

So we looked at each other and said, "Oh, that's not nice.

What is that?"

So then we went to Market View Heights, which is the neighborhood association on the north of the Inner Loop.

And they said, "Oh, that's a terrible idea."

Some of them.

And they said, "Well, why?"

"Well, how are we gonna get to the mall?"

Then we knew we had something in common.

And we started out in discussing it that way.

- Yeah, we realized that, you know, at first we, thought it was, you know, "We don't want them in our neighborhood" or all these other approaches, but so we had that spring off point of, yeah, it's a terrible idea.

Okay, we know this, that makes sense.

But you know this is gonna get filled.

And you have the opportunity to help shape the future of your neighborhood and those who are to come.

And I think it would behoove you if you spoke about what you want to see in this Inner Loop fill.

And that's how we got folks together.

- Yeah.

That wasn't always easy.

One of the things that about Nav, Shawn is a muralist.

He has outstanding murals all around town.

And also because Shawn loves Rochester.

He said, "We have to give something in order to get something.

So we're gonna go draw, get this mural going."

So we got permission from everybody and we encouraged the neighbors to talk to us about, "Is this gonna be a good idea?

Well, this is what we want."

So we said, "Okay."

So we started that day to drew the mural.

And they came to us and they said, "We're shutting you down."

I said, "Oh no, why?"

They said, "Well, because we're worried about graffiti and it's gonna look terrible in the future."

And so we promised them that if anything happened like that, we would fix it.

But we also said that Shawn's work doesn't get graffitied and that it's respected.

And the fact that Shawn was coming into the neighborhood to give this gift to the neighborhood was really well worth it.

And it's proven to be an example of how you can start something and get people to then talk about it.

'Cause that day, we had people come and say, "Here's what I want in the Inner Loop.

Here's what we want.

We want to have houses.

We wanna own our own house.

We want our neighborhood back.

You took away so much from us.

We want our neighborhood back.

We wanna be reunited and we want our downtown back."

That's what we heard.

- Did you put up the mural that day?

- Yeah, yeah.

- You make it happen?

- Yeah, it was all just smoke and mirrors is what basically she's saying.

It was just a trick to get people out because people are like, "Hey, what are those kids doing?

What those adults doing?

And why is it so bright and colorful?

And I get to sign my name on there?"

So it's all these things and people are like, "What is this about?"

All the time we're asking them the questions, "Hey, do you know the Inter Loop's coming?"

"No.

They're getting rid of that?"

"Yeah, they're getting rid of it."

"What?"

I don't know.

"What would you like to see?"

Housing.

Oh, some stores.

I'd like to have a business.

So all these things came into play.

And it was all part and parcel package of bringing two communities together who had not actually spoken to each other.

So between that moat, we have, we have Market View Heights and we have Grove Place Association.

And our goal was to bring them together to create this plan.

And through a series of workshops and working on zoning, housing, all these things, we brought those neighbors together in the midst of, you know, everybody in a COVID time.

But people really dedicated and put their time forth to say, if we can work together and we haven't talked to each other, we can accomplish great things from here on out and it will influence the future of other individuals who wanna help shape this Inner Loop.

And that's what we were able to do.

- Yeah.

There's something powerful there, and you know, the typical process is you have a meeting, you know, a public comment period and you lay out schematics and you take questions.

Like that's sort of the model of public engagement.

- Oh, we were taught something different.

One of our original board members who was very familiar with Inner Loop Projects as well, he said, "There's three ways of getting engagement and three ways you're gonna get something done.

There's the process, there's the plan, and there's implementation."

He said, "Most people, when they're having meetings, they've pretty much got a plan."

He said, "You've gotta disrupt that process."

And so that's what we did.

We put our foot out in front of each other before there was even a talk of a plan to get people worked up, to get people going, to get people thinking so that when there comes that point of that community meeting, people understand, "No, I mean low density."

"No, I mean this.

I mean a single lane."

I know, I mean- - So they have the vocabulary.

- Yes, they know what they have.

- They know what at-grade boulevard means.

- Right.

They did really have a better vocabulary for that time.

Yes.

And it was really, sorry.

It was fun to watch people create this thing.

It was a messy process.

And Erik was very kind to us in many ways.

Like we were in his face all the time and when you bring us in, we're messy.

You bring messiness to a project through having that kind of, it's almost like guerrilla education.

So here's what you're gonna see.

You're gonna have all these six concepts that somebody's gonna present to you and you're gonna give your ideas.

And I go to meetings like that.

I don't know what always, what is this before and I have to go home and think about it.

So we tried to make people aware of it with kindness going to meetings beforehand.

We were giving material.

Then we tried to present it to the people that we were talking to so they would understand, here's what you're gonna see.

Then you can give better input.

And then the city was able to listen to most of that.

And they kept saying, "Give us our grid back.

Give us the grid back."

And the city listened.

- Yeah, Brian, I was hoping you could give us a little context for the differences between these two phases of the project.

So Inner Loop East, again, is that first phase we talked about that's completed since 2018.

Inner Loop North is where Shawn and Suzanne live.

Why are these such different projects?

- So Inner Loop East largely exists between, I would say, two business districts.

2/3 of a mile.

Inner Loop North when it was put in, or that stretch, far more destructive.

300 plus structures, houses, apartment buildings, churches, parks were destroyed, entire streets were consumed.

And I think I said it, but 2/3 of a mile to 1 1/2 miles.

And you now have neighbors who I remember going out and talking to people.

They're like, "What?

Just so they can put in the east side here?"

Because what they did on the east side was large chunks of land, you know, multi-story apartment buildings, first floor commercial.

And like yours, they want affordable housing.

They want their neighborhood back.

They want their parks back.

They want the green space.

They want things to look at least like it does, you know, like that they fold together, that they don't suddenly stop and become something else.

And you had, yeah, a population living there for much of it on both sides.

And even there that, you know, the Inner Loop North does transition as it gets into downtown.

You know, you pass by the train station and different things like that.

But yeah, a much different task, far larger undertaking.

- Erik, are there lessons you learned from the Inner Loop East?

Things that you would do differently if you were to do it again or that you will do differently looking at the North side?

- Yeah, absolutely.

You know, we always have the benefit of hindsight.

And I'm not too proud to say that there aren't things that, you know, we could have done differently with the knowledge that we have today.

But also, yeah, we're looking at Inner Loop North and saying this is a different project, right?

It's the same in that we're removing a highway.

But the contexts that have been discussed, the way in which it was built, the way in which it bisected neighborhoods calls for a different approach, right?

And we knew that from the start.

So if Inner Loop East was focused on you know, job creation and generating investment, right?.

That's still important.

In Inner Loop North, but that's not the primary purpose, right?

The primary purpose is more equity.

It's more righting those historic wrongs.

It's about reconnecting neighborhoods in a true sense.

And I think that the planning process that we've followed with the help of our friends at Hinge and all of the neighborhood leaders who've been involved, is demonstrating that.

So it's not done yet.

We got a lot more engineering and design work to do.

But we're excited about what's coming.

- So I took a walk this morning as I mentioned, along the Inner Loop North, and then down along the Inner Loop East, the part that's done.

And it is, Brian, as you were describing, this sort of long row of big block apartment buildings.

And I stopped in one of those buildings.

There were some seniors having coffee and muffins around a table.

And I managed, the door was locked.

You couldn't just go in, but somebody came out for a cigarette and I was like, "Hey, can I come in and talk to you guys?"

So let me in and come and talk for a bit.

And the overwhelming sentiment I heard from them was just gratitude that they had housing there.

I talked to one woman who said, "I'd never thought I would be able to live downtown in Rochester.

And here I am."

She said that they treat us like kings and queens here.

- [Erik] That's great.

- The other sentiment I heard was skepticism about, like, should we really be doing more of this?

Like, do we trust the city and state to get this right on the north side?

Do we actually want, you know, more of these big apartment buildings?

So do you feel like the first round, like, did it build the goodwill and trust that you were hoping, or are you encountering a lot of that skepticism when you go out in the community now?

- Well, I think there's a healthy conversation about you know, the form and architectural vernacular that's expressed in buildings these days in a market like ours.

And that's fine.

Let's have that conversation.

Whatever is built, right?

If we're really talking about reconnecting neighborhoods and recreating neighborhoods, those neighborhoods have to be reflective of what's around it.

So context matters.

So, you know, if you were to look at the planning products that we've put out so far for Inner Loop North, you'll see that in the Market View Heights area, in the area where Hinge is focused, you know, we've heard loud and clear.

They want lower density housing mix, right?.

So we're looking at singles and doubles and town homes, smaller scale in that area.

It blends in well and that transition well between the Grove Place area and downtown and into the neighborhood.

In other parts, as the highway moves westerly and becomes more of that downtown context, then we can look at building larger buildings that better mirror what's around them in that area.

I will note that Inner Loop East, if you go there, you're gonna look at those buildings.

There's a popular misconception.

Yo look at those buildings, you say, "Oh, these are all for rich people.

These are all high end apartments," and they're not, right?

Built over 500 units of housing on the land in that area so far.

And nearly two thirds of the units that were delivered are regulated, affordable units for persons earning somewhere between 30% and 80% AMI.

There's considerable numbers of permanent supportive units that serve various special needs populations.

So it really is reflective of what we're trying to deliver, which is a downtown for everybody.

There's market-rate units, right?

That are renting at a pretty high price point.

And then there are apartments that are reserved for persons that are formerly homeless, and they're living side by side.

And you've got coffee shops and other things that have opened up in the corridor, and in the area, it's created a neighborhood.

That's the goal, and we hope that we can deliver that and working with our partners to make sure that what does come on the 20 plus acres of land that we're creating with Inner Loop North is what best serves the community for the long term.

- Wow.

Yeah, the scale of land, you know, I'd seen it on a map, but walking it today and seeing just how far it is, you know, from standing on one side, Suzanne, like, you know, in your neighborhood and looking across, it's like several blocks of distance, you know, when you include all the, you know, retaining walls and the ramps and the lanes and the median and everything.

There's a lot of space there.

- We asked.

We decided that we were interested in street design, which is what a transportation process is.

We were wanting them to make sure that their land use was a plan at the same time, parallel, so that the real estate group and the transportation people would actually talk more together.

And then can do some fine adjustments.

And fortunately, that land use plan, it may not be the end all be all, but it's the beginning of a really good discussions, I think, and how different things would affect the people who are there.

Like what should happen around the school.

You know, there's gonna be play areas for a school that has nothing.

It's right on the Inner Loop, School 58.

And we are, the suggestion is, well, is there going to be parking in that green space or is it going to be green space used?

That's the type of messiness we bring to the discussion.

And so I think that it's not, the discussion has not ended, but I think that's the way it goes.

And agreed.

Walking down on the inside on the Inner Loop East, it felt more like, oh, instead of remote, we know how to wall.

And we wanted to see, could we make that, we thought, a little bit less of a wall and become more of a, how do you do that?

And how do you not repeat the wall on the north side?

Does that make sense to you?

- And as Suzanne talks about it and what Erik was saying, you know, when she talks about the mess and we're trying to talk, we're trying to evangelize to people about this highway that's gonna be gone, you know?

It's gonna be gone.

And you know, we met with so many people in so many groups and in one particular which we then learned how to keep saying this, but we were working with our transportation, our buses and stuff.

We got to sit down with them.

And they're like, "No, we don't want that thing filled in.

It's gonna add a seven-minute commute to all our buses."

- You mean like the people running the city buses?

- Yes, yes, yes, yes.

And so we said, "Okay."

But when it's filled in, as Erik was just mentioning, you've got shops, you've got people who are living there of different incomes and realities.

You now create a seven-minute lifestyle drive and walk.

Now you're gonna stop at a coffee shop.

You can go to the laundromat.

I might go buy a book at the new bookstore.

So you're gonna add a seven-minute lifestyle commute, which is way better than just you just zipping past things.

There were some anecdotal stories of business owners when they did Inner Loop East.

That once it came up to grade and you had to send traffic down Union, people discovered, "Oh, there's a brewery here.

Oh, there's a flower shop."

And so some of those folks are an increase in business because you got to remember, they were just driving underneath it and never saw what was happening above ground.

They're just like tunneling rats, you know?

And so now this is what adds to lifestyle that you're gonna make some stops.

You'll make some breaks and find something new that you might not have discovered.

And I think that's the beauty of a city.

Find something new that you might not have discovered in your daily travels.

- And is that part of your outreach process is to show people what is already there on the other side of the moat that will soon be a seven-minute walk away?

- It's something people, go ahead.

- No, that was good.

No, it is part of it.

What we do is when part of our travels is we take people through the whole process.

So we walk the whole loop as you did.

We go north, we go east.

We walk- - [Ian] Is it eye-opening for some people?

Like have they Ever walked there?

- Yes, because they see the expanse and then we're like, "All right, we were standing over there.

Now you see we're over here.

Now we're gonna go over in this curve.

We were standing over here, you see it over there."

And like, wow, this is a lot.

And we actually show people as they're walking, we show them what the housing.

You can actually see some of the housing stock that was still there.

You have homes that are still there from 1888.

And you can see some of those same homes on the other side of the area.

So you can actually- - And imagine what was there.

- What the community was like.

So you have homes like on Lyndhurst Street where, you know, there's no driveways.

They didn't have cars.

And then we take them on the other side of Inner Loop North and you could see these same streets where there's no driveways because there were those such things.

You still got the hitching posts.

So it's just giving people that idea of what community was there and what it feels like.

- And bringing people who would never have that opportunity to be together to talk about the future.

And what was it gonna feel like being united again?

- Yeah.

- Sorry.

We just talk about these walks.

You gotta take people with walks.

There was a racial and equity committee that was put together for Inner Loop North.

And so we're all there.

Everybody's, you know, got their ideas.

How are we gonna do this?

How are we gonna structure it?

I said, "Dang, have any of you even walked in the neighborhood?"

"No."

- [Suzanne] Not one.

- Maybe you should go and walk before you try and figure out some metrics of race and equality and you don't even know what you're talking about.

And it was very eye-opening for that team.

We actually had a person with us who was in a wheelchair as well.

And she took us on the route that she would have to cross by the train station.

It takes us about a minute and a half.

She said, "It takes me 15 minutes.

I have to take all these opposite routes because I can't get across the street fast enough."

And so those kind of design considerations were put forth when they looked at land planning.

- There's a sort of a higher level question I'm curious to hear maybe from several of you on.

It's just how you think about restoration of what was there versus just creating something new.

There's one example that struck me on my walk is there's this park.

I'm trying to remember the name.

Oh yeah.

There's this park called Schiller Park which, you know, is this just little patch of greenery with a little statue in the middle of it and then a chain link fence and it drops off into the trench.

And it used to be, you know, this big expansive open space, one of the, you know, oldest green spaces in the city.

So when you're thinking about the potential of a project like this, are you trying to recreate what was there?

The grid that was there, the connections, the parks?

Or are you saying, you know, the damage was done, the past is the past.

Let's just focus on what we can deliver.

And who knows, maybe those two are one and the same thing, but I wonder if you permit yourself nostalgia or if you think that is productive when erasing a highway like this.

- I think you got to find that right balance.

You picked on the exact perfect example that I would have cited, right?

So when the Inner Loop was built it was routed through not one but two historic neighborhood squares.

One, Franklin Square which is a Olmsted-designed square, right?

A lot of value there.

Not a lot of value to highway designers in the 1950s who cut it in half.

And the other being Anderson Park, which is a triangular-shaped park.

I don't know if it's Olmsted design or not, but we'll go with, you know, it's historic.

And that was also lopped in half by construction of the Inner Loop.

What's interesting is the relationship between the two.

Anderson Park is the original home of the Schiller Monument that was a donation to the city of Rochester by the German American community.

When the Inner Loop was designed and was planning on knocking through both of those parks, the German American community took the monument, which had been located right at the intersection of Main and University, that corner of the triangle, and moved it to what was left of Franklin Square, renaming it Schiller Park.

- So there's this cascade of like displaced monuments.

- That's right.

That's right.

- One park gets cut in half.

They take the monument out entirely.

The other park gets cut in half.

They take that monument and put it in the other park that just got cut in half.

- That's right.

Erasing everybody's memory about what was, and let's just focus on- - And literally like renaming the parks.

That's why I called it Schiller and you called it Franklin.

- There you go.

- [Ian] Because of the Inner Loop.

- Yeah, and so in those examples, absolutely.

We want to, to the greatest extent that we can, right?

Restore those parks to their historic at least size and shape.

Perhaps the form is different.

The needs are different.

And we'll never have Olmsted back to guide us.

But those parks can still serve as the gathering place for the neighborhoods that surround them, right?

So the development that then comes in replacing this former highway has this green space that is the central gathering point for that neighborhood.

- How about for you all?

I mean, are you looking at historic pictures of what was there?

Does that spark your imagination in the conversations that you have with your neighbors too?

- Yeah, I think also we have to be realistic that there is gonna be probably more density.

And the point was- - Than there was before.

- Than there was before.

But there were a lot of a side note, we were asked to say, who was living in the Inner Loop at the time and when it was destroyed?

And in the same committee, we didn't know the answer.

So another person on the committee and I decided we would go to the city directories and see who was living there and what happened.

It was a very emotional time for people I didn't even know or have any... It was really unbelievable.

We started out in 1959 and we took those and we saw people who lived there.

The next time, that street was gone.

And those are the houses.

And we tried to make a database of who lived there.

And you could see people moving to the east to and at the end, two old white women looking at this and going, "We sat there in the library and cried.

It was really devastating.

It was a really... To watch that in a database."

- Just looking at names and dates.

- [Suzanne] Just looking at names and dates.

- You don't have faces, you don't have stories.

- It was unbelievably emotional.

And if we could feel that, that's the kind of emotion we'd like to see coming back.

If you hear people would say they took our neighborhood away, they took our schools away, then they took our downtown away.

How do you not think about restoration or reparation or whatever the word is, or it becomes four letter words in some people's vocabulary.

This is really about how do you really live the dream of Rochester?

Rochester is the home of Frederick Douglass.

I mean, it's an amazing man.

We have to set this example for the rest of the nation.

And when Shawn and I are asked to talk everywhere, I'm sure Erik feels the same way.

Rochester is an example and we don't even know it.

We want this to continue in the Inner Loop North to be the next best thing.

Certainly, we're gonna learn.

And it's an iterative process.

And we really would like to see, let's start.

Let's, you know, take the money we have and run with a, you know, I'm not in the government, so it's easy for me to say.

But it's really about we started something and we need to finish it.

And we need to finish it appropriately, remembering there were a lot of immigrant names, Black names, white names, green, you know, whatever you want.

Everything, everybody was there.

And we found two alumni groups that lived in Market View Heights and they will tell you about what happened and then they left.

And these are the people who came back when Shawn was doing his mural to remember what the place looked like.

I think that probably doing what we've been doing in the eight years probably significantly changed my life and my understanding of what people have gone through in these kind of destructive processes.

And how then do we make it better?

And I think that, you know, every conversation we've ever had with Erik has been like that.

And it's sort of like, what do we do?

And enough.

(laughs) And as you can tell, I'm very emotional about this whole thing.

And why do you do this?

Why are you that old and still involved?

Well, what we say, who else is going to do it if we don't do it?

If we don't ask the question, no one's going to do it or be heard.

And that's our job is to have those voices heard.

And we say we don't know a lot.

(laughs) And we can make mistakes easier than Erik can do it.

So we can also do some of the things that they maybe would like to do but can't do.

So we have to do that.

- Do you think it's possible to, I don't wanna say erase the divide, but to meaningfully bridge the divide between your two neighborhoods?

- I do.

That's how we are.

I never walked in that neighborhood.

I mean, I walked in the neighborhood and now I walk a lot in the neighborhood that is on the north side.

I would walk with people and they said, "Are you feeling safe here?"

"Yeah, I do."

I mean, the neighborhood, if you talk to people in the neighborhood, the neighborhood loves their neighborhood.

There are people who are trying to figure out, how am I gonna get back into this neighborhood?

And they like that.

So I do.

I have to be an optimist.

Living in today's world, we have to be optimists.

That is our job locally is to prove to the world that this can be different.

That we in Rochester can do something different and make it happen.

Sorry.

- No, no, no.

Just like you were saying, and we talk about this all the time.

And You've got to have a multicultural approach.

You've gotta view it that way.

I mean, things happen when you have different from people's lifestyles, incomes, ideas, belief systems, they work together to accomplish things.

I mean, that's what the abolitionist did.

That's what the suffrage movement was about.

That's how things get accomplished.

But if we always approach it as, "Oh no, these whites have got to build their neighborhood over here.

These Latinos got to build their neighborhood over here, these Blacks take to build their neighborhood over here."

No, if we can work together and view this together, we will see what a beautiful coalition of people can be and what we can do together.

I think this is why we try to exemplify that.

We try to show, no, we can do this.

Let's figure it out.

We may not agree all the time, but we can do this.

- We can try it.

And well, we're trying to do a prototype now, but we'll let you introduce it.

- No, I wanna ask about this.

That is a perfect segue because part of the reason I wanted to gather together this exact group of people is that you are all involved with a very concrete project right now.

In fact, you all came to this taping directly from a city council meeting talking about this.

So maybe Shawn and Suzanne, could you set that up?

What is it that you are working on right now?

- Okay, okay, we'll go there.

So for these past eight years and, you know, walking communities, walking neighborhoods, discussing things with folks, the one thing that resonated when people wanted to see filled in, once Inner Loop's filled, they said, as Erik mentioned as well, people wanted, you know, low density.

They want homes.

They want homeownership, homeownership, homeownership.

We don't want apartments like on Inner Loop East.

We want homes.

Bring our community back, bring us back to the grid.

And so that's always been on the back of our minds and it's always been on the back of our board's minds that one day we would love to develop some affordable housing.

Hmm.

And then one day, we've been trying it we've been playing with lots within Market View Heights, north of the Inner Loop working with great architects and land planners and trying to figure out what can we do?

What can we do?

As a kind of prototype test project.

- In anticipation of the Inner Loop North.

- You can't do it.

But then one day, one day, this fantastic architect of CGS called us up.

He's been working with us and playing with the ideas on the north.

He said, "Hey, there's this RFP for one of the last parcels on Inner Loop East, and I think you folks should develop it."

We said, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

Slow down here.

We don't know about that."

But we stuck to it, as Suzanne says, "If no one else is gonna do it, who else?"

And so we worked with fantastic Craig Jensen, and we are looking to develop 11 for-sale affordable units on one of the last parcels on Inner Loop East, which will bring back homeownership that Suzanne told you about, that she cried looking at the list of people who were removed from the neighborhood.

So we wanna put back what was taken away.

Now I toss it to you.

- Thank you.

(laughs) We started out on trying to do alley activation.

And in that was a discussion about auxiliary dwelling unit or accessory dwelling.

I always get the mixed up.

Well, Craig said, "Well, why don't we try putting one in a building, you know, and a townhouse?"

And we had talked about it and looking at Weld Street and people will say to you, there are a lot of other spaces available, vacant lots to build things on.

It's true.

We've looked at building units on Weld Street.

And we found we'd still wanna do something like that.

But when we went to find funding, people laughed at us really loud and said, "You're gonna have to get an outside foundation to come in and do this with you."

So we sort of said, "Okay, we'll start doing that right now."

And we did.

We kept looking outside and we still write grants and things like that for that.

But when we found that there was the Block by Block, which is a New York State for upstate cities, and probably designed by something that the city's been doing, which is by the block.

We said, "This is fantastic."

And Craig's design was, like, this is gonna do it.

If we can put nine units with an auxiliary dwelling unit on the first floor that could be accessible for people who are need accessible housing - Then we have something to play with.

And it was really, so nine of them can do that, two will have a garage, and then we'll have parking lot.

The original RFP said, "Don't have any parking."

We couldn't figure out how to not do that.

And so we have this, and we wanted to break it up so there was green in this area so that it could be like a prototype.

And town homes would then become more acceptable for homes in the north, in the Inner Loop North, thinking that density is probably important.

So and Craig's here, so he can- - It's fine.

- And it was really different.

So we said, "This sounds really great, and we'll go forward with it."

So we have been playing with it.

We submitted a proposal and there were other proposals and lo and behold, we were accepted.

And then now, what do we do?

- What do we do now?

We gotta figure it out.

- The benefit of this is it's at 60% of the average median income for Monroe County.

So this makes it a great way to, as we try to put things back, or as Suzanne always says, the four-letter word, this is a point of reparations.

You really wanna figure out how you do something.

You create equity, homeownership.

And this is what you do.

This is what you do to create the model of how we can do it.

So if we can get this done, we can replicate this in the Inner Loop North Phil.

And so this is why we're really excited about this project and really wanna push this forward and get the communities engaged.

- And it's multiculturalism because normally, we think about affordable housing.

We'll either we'll fill in an Inner Loop so that we can put some in, or we end up putting it in a poor neighborhood.

What we wanna do is have poor people come into an area that has- - Market rate high.

- Market rate high.

- [Speaker] Right across the street from it.

- And think of this.

If you have an AMI and we're trying to sell, there'll be between 100 is the- - Average medium.

- Average income, sorry.

Median income.

- Average median income for the neighborhood, - At 60%.

And if you could come in, if an ADU would allow you to rent out this apartment, you could then support your mortgage.

The mortgage then, you're buying a house.

I mean, we're doing something like this already in Rochester.

But here, you're creating a house and 15 years, you can sell this house at market rate.

So talk about what generational wealth is that you could buy the house for 200,000.

Theoretically, then in 15 years, they are, many houses in the area are being sold for 500, 600,000.

You then created this huge bump for someone who's going in there at 60% AMI.

That doesn't mean they're always gonna be there, but it's an example of what could be done.

And then you're not at a depressed level of, I'm sorry, of investment or appreciation as you may be in an area that has been designated, well, build your affordable houses in the poor net area.

We've been told there are a lot of other vacant lots that are possible to build on.

We looked at them.

We tried to look at one before.

It's contaminated.

I wouldn't wanna build there.

There's a place in our neighborhood that we're interested in Weld Street.

But in reality, that raises in the value of that real estate in 15 years is never gonna be compared to this place.

And so it's an example of what it could do if we think about this for the future.

And I'm not gonna be around, but that's gonna be good.

- Yeah, you will.

Yeah, you will.

- 15 years.

- That's how you jumpstart.

That's how you jumpstart.

That's how you jumpstart the generational wealth.

That's how you jumpstart it, because some people had a chance to do it before other people could.

So this is an opportunity to actually jumpstart that initiative to be like, "All right, all right.

Some people had, you know, 50, 60, 80, 120 years ahead of you to get this going.

You can start now."

- Yeah.

Erik, what'd you think when these two community organizers showed up and said, "We wanna be developers."

- [Shawn] He laughed.

- Yeah.

- Did they look like your average real estate developers?

- Well, you know, the first the first go around of some of the conversations you know, on Weld Street looked very different from conversations that we're having today, right?

About this property at 125 Charlotte Street, which, you know, one, we got a lot of interest, right?

There's a lot of interest in development in the city right now.

And that's good.

That's healthy.

But this project stood out.

It's different.

It's the right project On so many levels for what we're trying to achieve, right?

We've got a racial wealth gap in this community.

And how are we gonna address it?

Well, what is the foundation of household wealth?

Homeownership.

What is the gap between white homeownership and Black and brown homeownership in this community?

It's extensive.

How do we address that?

Let's help Black and brown households buy homes in the city of Rochester.

And why not do that downtown where we know that that property is going to continue to grow in value over time?

We're setting up these families for not only stability that comes from homeownership but long-term wealth generation.

- Do you see what you're doing as a model for the nation?

- Of course.

(audience laughs) Of course.

Both working with my friends over here, and I hope that we can get through that process with them and be at a groundbreaking in the not too distant future.

But of course, with what we're doing with Inner Loop in general, right?

Let's not forget, we've done something spectacular here.

It's rare.

There aren't a lot of communities that have done what we've done.

We've hosted so many communities from across the country.

We've hosted or participated in meetings with communities from literally across the world.

People want to see this.

This is unique.

This is different.

And we did it here in Rochester.

Let's do more of it.

Let's show the world what we can do.

- Thank you so much for being here tonight.

(audience applauds) (lively music) (playful music)