Big events, recreation, culture: CNY has it all and more

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Whether it’s to attend a college basketball game before a record crowd, organize a major business conference or convention, enjoy the area’s world-class gaming options, or take in its vast recreational opportunities, visitors to the Central New York region come for many different reasons. The area includes Greater Syracuse and the Finger Lakes, the Mohawk […]

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The area includes Greater Syracuse and the Finger Lakes, the Mohawk Valley, the Thousand Islands and Lake Ontario, and Greater Binghamton.

The region offers picturesque natural attractions, outdoor sports and recreation, culture, big events, a central location, ease of travel, affordable and spacious accommodations, and many interesting places to see and things to do.

Central New York is a major destination for conventions, conferences, business meetings, annual festivals such as Oswego Harborfest, and special events like athletic competitions.

In short, the region has no shortage of places and opportunities to meet, stay, and play.

So if it’s action you’re seeking, Central New York is in the middle of it all.

We turned to area tourism agencies and convention and visitors’ bureaus to help us detail what their parts of CNY have to offer visitors.

Here are some of the highlights in our region.

Greater Syracuse
Strategically situated in the center of the state, Syracuse is easily accessible for most meeting attendees, with more than 63 million people located within a 350-mile radius of the city. Syracuse offers a variety of accommodations including more than 6,700 hotel rooms with 2,100 available to conventions. New to downtown Syracuse is a combined 78-room Residence Inn and 102-room Courtyard by Marriott which offers meeting space, a fitness center, bar, and pool. Additionally, Syracuse offers a wide variety of flexible meeting facilities ranging from the spacious Oncenter Convention Center and NYS Fairgrounds to the new facilities available at Destiny USA and the SRC Arena & Events Center, to the historic Landmark Theatre, onward to the iconic Carrier Dome and more.

In Syracuse, meetings and events don’t always happen in traditional venues. The area’s first-class natural resources, including more than 50 state, county, and city parks and excellent waterways continue to draw national, regional, and statewide athletic events such as the Ironman 70.3 and Iron Girl Syracuse triathlons.

Syracuse continues to capitalize on its repeat customers and the growth of those events, in addition to securing new business opportunities such as those in the expanding sustainability meetings market segment thanks to the community’s leadership in that arena showcased by the Syracuse Center of Excellence and Destiny USA, the largest LEED Gold certified retail building in the country.

In addition to excellent accommodations and meeting facilities, the Syracuse Convention & Visitors Bureau (SCVB) rolls out the red carpet with award-winning and complimentary services (based on hotel room usage) which include 24-hour availability during events. “Syracuse’s commitment to the customer experience brings event planners back over and over again,” says Tracey Kegebein, SCVB’s vice president of sales and services.

As Syracuse’s list of tourism assets continues to expand, customers are treated to unsurpassed fun outside of the meeting room. Destiny USA, the sixth largest mall in America, offers visitors a unique mix of traditional and outlet retail, entertainment, and dining options. These include WonderWorks, OptiGolf, and Pole Position Raceway on the fun/recreation side of things. Gordon Biersch, P.F. Chang’s, Texas de Brazil, and Toby Keith’s I Love This Bar & Grill provide fine dining and nightlife. And, Saks Fifth Avenue Off 5th, BCBG, and Michael Kors attract shoppers.

Additionally, the Greater Syracuse area is home to more than 40 golf courses and an abundance of museums and galleries, including the nationally known Everson Museum of Art and the Milton J. Rubenstein Museum of Science & Technology. The Syracuse Opera is Central New York’s only year-round professional opera company, and the Syracuse Stage is the region’s premier professional theatre.

And, Syracuse Hancock International Airport, featuring a newly renovated terminal, makes it easy for visitors to get here and return home after their trip is complete.

Mohawk Valley
Utica, Rome, Verona, and Sylvan Beach are centrally located just off the New York State Thruway, providing a convenient location for conventions, meetings, and other gatherings. Whether you need space for 10 people or 10,000, Oneida County has a meeting facility for you. Event planners have a variety of locations to choose from, including The Beeches Inn & Conference Center and the Radisson-Utica Centre. Those planning large conventions and seeking gaming options will find that Turning Stone Resort Casino and Vernon Downs Casino Hotel will meet their needs. The region offers more than 2,800 rooms at AAA Four Diamond resort hotels, national chains, and independently owned properties.

Whether it’s a meeting, conference, group tour, reunion, or social event you are planning, the region offers no shortage of attractions and things to do. Take in a Broadway show at the historic Stanley Theatre in Utica or enjoy dinner theater at The Beeches.

Visitors can also take in behind-the-scenes factory tours at places such as the Saranac Brewery, Harden Furniture, and Meyda Tiffany Lighting. Experience the Revolutionary War at Fort Stanwix National Monument. Meeting planners might also want to try something unique like a “Learn to Curl” Ice Breaker event at the Utica Curling Club for a memorable teambuilding opportunity. Need to add a golf outing? Choose from 29 public courses, including the championship courses at Turning Stone ranked among the “Top 40 Best Casino Courses” by Golfweek magazine.

Thousand Islands/Lake Ontario area
The Thousand Islands region of northern New York has been attracting visitors in search of a relaxing vacation among its scenic islands, crystal-clear water, and endless shorelines for more than 100 years. Today, it draws everyone from boaters to history buffs, diving enthusiasts, anglers, and families seeking “cottage country.”

The 1000 Islands is all about getting visitors onto the water to cruise among its namesake features. All told, 1,864 islands dot the two sides of the international border. Boat-tour companies are located in almost every community and offer narrated tours of the islands and their history of Gilded Age wealth, pirates and bootleggers, and famous guests. Boldt and Singer castles give visitors a chance to tour the palatial island homes once used by the wealthy at the turn-of-the-century.

Waterfront communities like the kitschy Alexandria Bay, with its souvenir shops, family dining, drive-in movie theater, and free events like Pirates Days attract

visitors trying to escape traffic, strip malls, and fast-food joints. Others head to Clayton, known for its Antique Boat Museum, waterfront Opera House, riverside dining, and parks.

Lodging runs the gamut from waterfront resorts and conference centers with riverside dining to cottage colonies, mom-and-pop motor lodges, and campgrounds.

Anglers flock to Oswego County for fishing opportunities ranging from trolling on Lake Ontario for trophy trout and salmon to angling for steelhead and brown trout on the Salmon and Oswego rivers. An experienced fleet of charter-boat captains and river guides provide complete fishing packages for all ages.

If big events are your thing, Oswego’s annual Harborfest attracts thousands to see national, regional, and local acts performing a wide range of music, including jazz, country, folk, big band, and rock.

Greater Binghamton
At the confluence of the Susquehanna and Chenango Rivers lies Greater Binghamton, a region rich in scenic beauty, enchanting villages, and lively cities. Its central location, at the junctions of I-81, I-88, and NY 17 (future I-86), makes it easily accessible within New York state. Add that to its 2,500 first-class, affordable overnight accommodations, modern meeting/exhibit facilities, and top-quality sports venues, and you have all the ingredients for a successful event.

The area offers more than 250 restaurants, from locally owned and operated eateries to nationally recognized chains. You can choose to frequent quaint antique stores, specialty shops, or top brand names. Attractions in the area include the Roberson Museum & Science Center, The Bundy Museum of History & Art, the Binghamton Zoo at Ross Park, the Discovery Center of the Southern Tier, the Phelps Mansion Museum, Windy Hill Candle Factory/Candyland, and the Cider Mill.

AHL hockey (Binghamton Senators), AA baseball (B-Mets), Champions Tour golf (Dick’s Sporting Goods Open), USTA tennis (Binghamton Tennis Challenger event), and more than a dozen top-quality golf courses await the sports enthusiast. Parks, campgrounds, and hiking and biking trails are sure to please outdoor fans.

The Southern Tier also welcomes you to Tioga County. This is River Country, in the beautiful southern Finger Lakes Region. Nestled among lovely hills and valleys, the county has the Susquehanna River winding its way through 33 miles.

Enjoy dining at some great restaurants, have a glass of wine or beer on top of a 3-story rooftop beer garden, or eat and drink wine in an old jail cell; or sip some Finger Lakes wine overlooking the Riverwalk. Experience the excitement of harness, auto and motorcycle races, challenge yourself with outdoor sports such as hiking, biking, fishing, hunting, golf, or cross-country skiing. Shop downtown Owego, where you can purchase a Russian Matryoshka Nesting Doll, one of the largest collections in the state, local artisan-made crafts, clothing, art, and jewelry from a number of artists’ collective stores. You can purchase homemade fudge, have a vanilla latté, make a stained-glass hanging, or buy unique children’s toys.

Letter to the Editor: Good Intentions, Bad Outcomes

Opinion, Subscriber Only

Set to the background of a mournful piano melody, a stoic, authoritative voice on the radio public-service announcements tells us in hushed, reverent tones, that the person next to us in the car, or perhaps our office mate down the hall, or even one of our kid’s friends, all suffer with hunger. We are told

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We are told that 1 in 6 do not know from where their next meal is coming. Yet while the radio ads mournfully drive this point home, the fact is that America’s poor are also the most obese, dependent, and addicted subset of our citizens.

So how can this all be true?

The Community Hunger Outreach Warehouse, known as CHOW, is one of the most familiar and widely supported local charities in Broome County. Founded in 1976, this organization provides and distributes food throughout Broome County, presumably for those in need. But what actually happens is often quite different.

Those seeking CHOW handouts are in no way means tested. The only limitation is a loosely enforced once-a-month allowance for participation, but with no system in place that effectively monitors activity at the 30-some distribution locations. This lax oversight allows individuals wide latitude in visiting multiple locations to receive repeated allotments of food.

A group of college kids, holed up in one of their grandmother’s homes after she was admitted to a nursing home, regularly seeks and receives free CHOW food to stock the pantry of their squatters’ digs. All able-bodied boys in their early 20s, I asked them if they thought this was right. Through strained smiles and nervous shuffles betraying a hint of guilt, they laughed it off as easy and fun.

In addition to food pantries, CHOW operates more than a dozen soup kitchens that again require no means testing and serve food seven days a week to anyone who shows up. For the kids, schools provide free breakfast and lunch as well. A resourceful person can find at least one meal a day, every day, served up fresh and hot — no questions asked and with no accountability and no effect on their other benefits.

Virtually anyone who is in true need of CHOW’s services certainly qualifies for food stamps (now known as SNAP or, Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program). More than 45 million Americans are SNAP recipients, which basically provides qualified applicants a food credit card, courtesy of the taxpayers. This federal program is designed to provide the essentials for recipients’ entire nutritional needs, so why do we continue to supplement governmental programs with redundant private ones?

Unfortunately, when the needy get greedy, these well-intended efforts become the tools of the unscrupulous. The same kind-heartedness that it takes to conceptualize, create, and operate such humanitarian endeavors also many times yields to a naivety, resulting in a blind spot that is oblivious to wrong-doers and manipulators of the system, of which there are many.

“Carol” recently intercepted me in front of a popular grocery store in Binghamton. She offered to “shop” with me and provide my groceries for 50 cents on the dollar, via her SNAP benefit card. Judging by Carol’s demeanor and unkempt presence, it was not difficult or arbitrary to conclude that she was an active drug user, seeking cash for her habit.

In the same store, a couple of weeks later, while in line, I observed two young ladies ahead of me with a grocery cart filled with 2-litre bottles of soda and bags of snack foods. As car keys dangled from one girl’s purse, I saw membership cards to a local, high-end health club as well as the tanning salon located right next door. I watched them line up the items on the conveyor belt and I observed one of the women pull out a SNAP card and slip it in into the card-reader. As she did this, I could plainly see the photo on the card, clearly a middle-aged man with grey hair and a beard. After the young ladies left the store and I began my cash transaction with the teenage cashier, I asked her why the store did not apparently care about who was using the SNAP cards. She told me, with a straight face, that it made no difference. She went on to tell me that her “mother’s boyfriend uses her card all the time.”

Upwards of 70 percent of the income in some local grocery stores is attributable to SNAP and other forms of welfare payments, according to a management source who requested anonymity. Because many stores are so heavily dependent upon SNAP and other forms of welfare for their very financial survival, they have no incentive for voicing their concerns about misuse.

Not quite believing what I was hearing regarding the use of others’ SNAP cards, the next day I phoned the Broome County social services office to get some clarification. The gentleman who fielded my inquiry explained that anyone can indeed use anyone else’s SNAP card, provided of course that they are getting the items for the use of that card holder.

The U.S. is the only country in the world where the neediest and poorest are also the most overweight and obese. How can this be? Even as all of these programs go on, those radio ads continue telling us that 1 in 6 of us do not know from where our next meal is coming. This newest form of politically correct, fuzzy logic in search of a problem, is known as “meal uncertainty.” When seen in its entirety, this strains all logic.

Well-meaning volunteers and donors take pride and satisfaction in feeling like their efforts keep people from going hungry. This sense of accomplishment is self-fulfilling and rewarding, more so in this case to those providing the charity, than in many cases those taking advantage of it. CHOW and all of the soup kitchens should be means tested. When the needy partake of a meal in a soup kitchen, and their kids eat two of three meals at school, SNAP benefits ought to reflect that and be adjusted accordingly.

Certainly, taxpayers do not expect SNAP beneficiaries going into the market and buying designer cuts of steak or lobster tail, but under the system as it works today, there is no limit on the types of foods that recipients can choose.

This program would be more credible and more likely embraced by thoughtful taxpayers if it actually encouraged proper nutrition. Individuals signing up for SNAP benefits should be provided an assortment of available items that are nutritionally appropriate for their familial circumstances, limited to the basic, nutritional requirements of that family. These items should also be restricted to include only the most affordable brand available. Taxpayers ought to be getting the best value for their tax dollars while these families receive the proper nutrition.

Because of the modern computer-scanning devices used in the checkout lines of most stores, the buying habits of all SNAP recipients is already a known fact packed away in a database somewhere. But the sad reality is the government cares nothing about the dietary habits of recipients because it needs them to stay happy not nutritious. Not only is the government using other people’s money to buy SNAP recipients food, but it is also purchasing their undying devotion by way of their votes. It’s trading re-election for dependence, which is the real-life example of the adage, not biting the hand that feeds you.

When many SNAP recipients are overweight, obese, or addicted, able to convert forms of human compassion into money for their habits, we have not only failed to address the core issues of poverty and hunger, but we have also unwittingly built a system ripe for being taken advantage of by encouraging people to be dependent.

As usual, the unintended consequences have completely overwhelmed the programs’ original intent. And liberal political leaders, so hell-bent on controlling everyone’s life, have no sense of responsibility in accepting that they are not only a part of the problem, but they are also the source and cause of it as well.

On a recent trip to Mexico City, I was swarmed by peasant children when I wandered too far from my hotel one evening. Looking into the eyes of a truly hungry child leaves one with no doubt about their desperate need. There is no uncertainty in your mind about their plight in life. Seeing dirt and grime worn hard into the pores of a person’s skin, so sufficiently stained as to never be clean, leaves no room for reservations about lending a hand. Back home, watching overweight, obnoxious drug addicts, proudly gaming the system in America, makes me sick for the rest of the truly needy in this world.

As the poet Kahlil Gibran said, “The mountain to the climber is clearer from the plain.” And so too apparently is the greatness of America to the dependent class we have unfortunately fomented into seeming permanence.

Bob Kingsley
Port Dickinson, NY

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