BINGHAMTON — The Stadium Lofts housing project near Mirabito Stadium in Binghamton is in the process of seeking low-income housing tax credits from the state.

“It’s received all local planning and zoning approvals. It’s just waiting on some state approvals and then it can start construction assuming that funding comes through,” says Binghamton Mayor Jared M. Kraham.

It’s a competitive process for low-income housing tax credits, so the developer hopes to learn more about moving forward as the year progresses. Kraham spoke with CNYBJ in a phone interview on May 12. 

Kraham last August joined Ken Kearney, president of the Kearney Group development firm, to announce plans for a $24 million, 70-unit mixed-use housing project at 180 Henry St., near the stadium, per a news release on the City of Binghamton’s website.

Mirabito Stadium is home to the Binghamton Rumble Ponies, the Double-A affiliate of Major League Baseball’s (MLB) New York Mets. 

The Stadium Lofts project will provide new workforce housing units, with up to half of the units marketed toward people who work in the arts. The developer is applying for affordable-housing tax credits through New York State Homes and Community Renewal (HCR). The state agency has an “artist preference policy” that supports affordable housing for artists as a component of communities’ revitalization efforts and seeks to promote diversity in affordable housing, per the city’s release.

In addition to the residential space, the Stadium Lofts project includes four units of ground-floor commercial space. 

“We’re thrilled to see such an exciting and vibrant project taking shape right across the street from Mirabito Stadium,” David Sobotka, owner and president of the Binghamton Rumble Ponies, said in the city’s release. “Alongside the City, we welcome Ken’s firm as the newest partner in our collective effort to revitalize Henry Street, draw more people to the Stadium District and continue to improve the area.”

The Stadium Lofts project is part of the Mirabito Stadium District Master Plan (SDMP). The SDMP will guide development and public investments near the city-owned stadium at 211 Henry St. downtown with a goal of spurring transformative projects in housing, infrastructure and economic development in the district.

About the plan

Kraham explains that cities across the country, both large and small, use sports stadiums to “jump start” other economic-development activity.

“The neighborhood that surrounds a ballpark comes to define the team as much as the ballpark itself, whether it’s Wrigleyville [in Chicago] or Camden Yards [in Baltimore],” says Kraham.

Binghamton officials were seeing a lack of housing in the city, a need for further revitalization, and the necessity to reduce some blight in the area around Mirabito Stadium. They also saw a residential-commercial area near the downtown core that’s accessible from highways and figured “there’s really no reason why this isn’t the next great commercial area in the Southern Tier of New York,” according to Kraham.

The SDMP addresses housing, including existing dwellings and new construction, infrastructure improvements in the corridor, streetscape and public-space improvements, intersection redesigns, sidewalks, and pedestrian-friendly amenities. 

“You can’t have a vibrant commercial corridor without safe, walkable streets. That stadium district, those neighborhoods deserve the best of the infrastructure we can offer,” the Binghamton mayor contends. 

Besides the Stadium Lofts, other projects still to come around the stadium include the Henry Street connective-corridor design project, which is currently underway. In addition, Station 45, a steakhouse in the Lackawanna Train Station, will open this summer. Binghamton’s new fire station opened a few months ago on Court Street, which is part of the stadium district, Kraham notes. 

He went on to say that the City of Binghamton owns the baseball stadium and has spent millions of dollars to make it compliant with MLB regulations. The next review to determine whether or not Binghamton keeps the Rumble Ponies is in 2030. 

“What we want to have by that point is not just the stadium that the players deserve and Major League Baseball approves of, but [also] the vibrant commercial area that surrounds it that gets more people to want to come to the ballpark, that makes it more walkable, more accessible, and just more amenities that are down there,” says Kraham.        

BINGHAMTON — In an effort to be as proactive as possible in spurring development in Broome County, The Agency has been working with a consulting firm to identify, rank, and create marketing sheets for developable sites around the county.

In the first phase of this project, Elan Consulting and Planning of Albany identified 250 sites, Brendan O’Bryan, director of community and economic development at The Agency, says. “Once we knew all the sites, we could figure out which would have the highest level of community impact and the barriers for those sites to achieve future development.”

Using those factors, and some others, The Agency worked with the consulting team to rank the sites in advance of creating “spec sheets” for them all, he says.

“In phase one, they collected a lot of baseline info on sites,” O’Bryan says of Elan Consulting and Planning. Phase two will include much more detail, even including environmental information on relevant sites. Ultimately, the spec sheets will go on the Agency’s website — accessible to developers and anyone else with an interest.

“These spec sheets will have everything on them that developers ask for when seeking ownership of a site to develop on,” he says.

The Agency received an Appalachian Regional Commission Area Development grant totaling just over $85,000 for the project. That grant runs through late October, and the Agency hopes to have an initial batch of about 75 spec sheets online by the end of the year, O’Bryan says.

“There are 250 sites, so obviously we can’t do spec sheets for all 250 right off the bat,” he says. The plan is to get that first batch of 75 live on the website and continue to work on the rest of them. Then, as a parcel is developed, it can come off the website and a new one will replace it. “So, it’s constantly getting reloaded,” says O’Bryan.

The project came about as the Agency would receive leads for anonymous businesses looking for certain types of sites. The Agency was finding it could not quickly react to such requests and provide information fast enough.

With areas such as renewable energy, batteries, and semiconductors growing quickly, there has been a growing amount of interest in developable sites and requests for information, O’Bryan says.

With the new spec sheets, The Agency will be able to quickly send information on multiple sites that might meet a developer’s needs, increasing the chances the developer may select a Broome County location.

The process has been eye opening, O’Bryan says. “I think there were more [sites] than we thought,” he notes. The organization was also able to see some areas where multiple smaller sites were close together and could be packaged as a parcel cluster.

“What also surprised us were some sizes,” he adds. The more urban areas are running out of large, developable sites, but this process revealed some larger rural, often green field sites, with potential, he says.

Another thing the process enabled the Agency to do is note parcels that have a lot of potential, but a few small barriers. “We might not have the funds to throw everything at a site to get it ready, but we can chip away at it,” O’Bryan says. Every little bit can help make a site more attractive to developers.

The Agency is the lead economic-development organization for the county, governing the Broome County Industrial Development Agency and the Broome County Local Development Corporation. The Agency is also part of the Leadership Alliance, a partnership between it and the Greater Binghamton Chamber of Commerce.