Stay up-to-date on the companies, people and issues that impact businesses in Syracuse, Central New York and beyond.

SYRACUSE, N.Y. — Onondaga County will host another COVID-vaccine booster clinic, is planning for a new community-testing location, and has concerns about virus clusters in

Drone corridor between Syracuse and Rome to host 5G test network for unmanned aircraft
SYRACUSE, N.Y. — The 50-mile unmanned-aircraft systems (UAS) corridor between Syracuse and Rome will host a 5G test network for unmanned aircraft. The MITRE Engenuity

The company building a chip fab near Utica changes name to Wolfspeed
Durham, North Carolina–based Cree Inc. — which is building its $1 billion Mohawk Valley Fab near Utica — has changed its name to Wolfspeed, Inc.

Rome man charged with multiple burglary and weapons felonies
ROME, N.Y. — The New York State Police on Wednesday arrested a Rome man for stealing five handguns, a shotgun, and a rifle from

New York farms produce record-high yield of winter wheat this year
ALBANY, N.Y. — New York farms harvested 9.63 million bushels of winter wheat in 2021, with an average yield of 77 bushels per acre — a record-high yield. Winter-wheat production in the state was up 21.5 percent this year from 2020, when the state’s farms produced 7.92 billion bushels of winter wheat. This year’s yield
Become a Central New York Business Journal subscriber and get immediate access to all of our subscriber-only content and much more.
Click here to purchase a paywall bypass link for this article.
ALBANY, N.Y. — New York farms harvested 9.63 million bushels of winter wheat in 2021, with an average yield of 77 bushels per acre — a record-high yield.
Winter-wheat production in the state was up 21.5 percent this year from 2020, when the state’s farms produced 7.92 billion bushels of winter wheat. This year’s yield was up nearly 17 percent from 66 bushels per acre a year ago. Harvested area for wheat came in at 125,000 acres in 2021, up from 120,000 acres a year prior.
The data comes from Donnie Fike, state statistician of the USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS), New York field office.
The NASS New York field office also estimated New York oat production at 1.97 million bushels this year, up more than 16 percent from nearly 1.7 million bushels in 2020. The yield was estimated at 68 bushels per acre in 2021, up 15 bushels, or 28 percent, from last year. Harvested area was pegged at 29,000 acres this year, down 9 percent from 32,000 acres a year earlier.
Barley production in New York was estimated at 315,000 bushels in 2021, up 15,000 bushels, or 5 percent, from 2020. The average yield hit a record high for the Empire State at 63 bushels per acre this year, up from 60 bushels in the previous year. This year, producers seeded 9,000 acres of barley and harvested 5,000 acres, both unchanged from 2020, according to the field office.
Syracuse apartment rent prices were mixed in September, per Zumper report
SYRACUSE — The median rental price for most apartments in the Syracuse metro area rose nearly 4 percent in September compared to August and almost 12 percent from a year prior, according to the latest Zumper National Rent Report, issued on Sept. 28. The median rental price of one-bedroom apartments in the Syracuse region was
Become a Central New York Business Journal subscriber and get immediate access to all of our subscriber-only content and much more.
Click here to purchase a paywall bypass link for this article.
SYRACUSE — The median rental price for most apartments in the Syracuse metro area rose nearly 4 percent in September compared to August and almost 12 percent from a year prior, according to the latest Zumper National Rent Report, issued on Sept. 28.
The median rental price of one-bedroom apartments in the Syracuse region was $860 in September, up 3.6 percent from $830 in August and 11.7 percent higher than the $770 median price posted in September 2020, according to Zumper, an apartment-rental listings website.
However, rent prices went the other way for larger apartments. The median rental rate for two-bedroom units in the area was $1,000 in September, down 2.9 percent from $1,030 in the prior month, and off 4.8 percent from $1,050 in the year-earlier month.
Syracuse now ranks as tied for the 82nd most expensive rental market (or tied for 17th least expensive) — with Augusta, Georgia and Winston-Salem, North Carolina — among the top 100 markets in the nation, per the report.
The Zumper National Rent Report analyzes rental data from more than 1 million active listings across the U.S. The company aggregates the data monthly to calculate median asking rents for the Top 100 metro areas by population.
Lockheed Martin Owego plant wins more than $12.4 million Navy contract
OWEGO, N.Y. — Lockheed Martin Rotary and Mission Systems in Owego was recently awarded a more than $12.4 million firm-fixed price order against a previously issued, basic ordering agreement. This order provides non-recurring engineering (NRE) and test support for the Avionics 3i/5i Operational Test Program Sets (OTPS) in support of i7 capabilities required by the
Become a Central New York Business Journal subscriber and get immediate access to all of our subscriber-only content and much more.
Click here to purchase a paywall bypass link for this article.
OWEGO, N.Y. — Lockheed Martin Rotary and Mission Systems in Owego was recently awarded a more than $12.4 million firm-fixed price order against a previously issued, basic ordering agreement.
This order provides non-recurring engineering (NRE) and test support for the Avionics 3i/5i Operational Test Program Sets (OTPS) in support of i7 capabilities required by the Navy, according to a Sept. 24 contract announcement from the U.S. Department of Defense. Additionally, this order procures five OTPS kits, four mission computers, and four flight-management computers in support of NRE efforts.
Work will be performed in Owego (91 percent) and Clearwater, Florida (9 percent), and is expected to be completed in May 2025. Fiscal 2021 aircraft-procurement (Navy) funds totaling $12,445,325 will be obligated at the time of award, none of which will expire at the end of the current fiscal year. The Naval Air Systems Command in Patuxent River, Maryland is the contracting authority.
Oneida County hotel occupancy increases more than 27 percent in August
UTICA, N.Y. — Oneida County’s hotels again saw a rebound in guests in August compared to a year ago as the recovery from the pandemic-induced slowdown in the hospitality business continues. The county’s hotel-occupancy rate (rooms sold as a percentage of rooms available) rose 27.5 percent to 74.1 percent in August, compared to the year-prior
Become a Central New York Business Journal subscriber and get immediate access to all of our subscriber-only content and much more.
Click here to purchase a paywall bypass link for this article.
UTICA, N.Y. — Oneida County’s hotels again saw a rebound in guests in August compared to a year ago as the recovery from the pandemic-induced slowdown in the hospitality business continues.
The county’s hotel-occupancy rate (rooms sold as a percentage of rooms available) rose 27.5 percent to 74.1 percent in August, compared to the year-prior month. That’s according to a recent report from STR, a Tennessee–based hotel market data and analytics company.
Revenue per available room (RevPar), a key industry gauge that measures how much money hotels are bringing in per available room, jumped 47.2 percent to $107.58 in this year’s eighth month, compared to August 2020.
Average daily rate (or ADR), which represents the average rental rate for a sold room, increased 15.5 percent to $145.28 this August.
The robust August 2021 hotel-occupancy report represents the sixth consecutive month of significant increases in occupancy, compared to the year-ago month, but this was the smallest rise of the six. These are the first half-dozen months in which the year-over-year comparisons were to a month affected significantly by the COVID crisis. The last year of monthly reports before that showed substantial declines in occupancy as the comparisons were to a pre-pandemic month.

$85M aquarium project could be coming to Syracuse’s Inner Harbor
SYRACUSE — An aquarium that will be a magnet for tourists and boost economic development is in the Syracuse Inner Harbor’s future if Onondaga County Executive Ryan McMahon has his way. The proposed 2022 budget that McMahon outlined Oct. 5 includes an $85 million aquarium project at the Syracuse Inner Harbor. “We’ve been working on this
Become a Central New York Business Journal subscriber and get immediate access to all of our subscriber-only content and much more.
Click here to purchase a paywall bypass link for this article.
SYRACUSE — An aquarium that will be a magnet for tourists and boost economic development is in the Syracuse Inner Harbor’s future if Onondaga County Executive Ryan McMahon has his way.
The proposed 2022 budget that McMahon outlined Oct. 5 includes an $85 million aquarium project at the Syracuse Inner Harbor.
“We’ve been working on this in partnership with our parks department, our zoo, and the Central New York Regional Planning [and Development] Board for months,” McMahon said Oct. 4 in announcing the project at the Inner Harbor.
The plan was included in McMahon’s county-budget address the next day before the county legislature.
“In this budget, we are seeking $35 million to construct an aquarium at the Inner Harbor of Syracuse. I will come back to this body for an additional $50 million of 2021 surplus funds in 2022,” the county executive said in prepared remarks for the budget address. “As usual, we did our homework to make sure this project was viable. We solicited a professional, independent market analysis and the results were nothing short of astounding,” he added.
The aquarium project would result in hundreds of good-paying trades and construction jobs; hundreds of permanent jobs; and a “catalyst for development” in the Inner Harbor neighborhood, per McMahon. The aquarium project would have a private operator and function as a public-private partnership.
Fayetteville–based COR Development Co. LLC currently owns the four acres of land where crews would build the aquarium, but McMahon said Onondaga County has negotiated terms to “hopefully close on this land, so it’ll be owned by the county.”
The county executive is hopeful that crews could begin construction on the project in late 2022 but he’s unsure of when the project might finish.
“This is big,” Syracuse Mayor Ben Walsh said to begin his remarks at the Oct. 4 event. “And it’s a long time coming.”

Two Mirabito stores to get EV charging stations
SYRACUSE, N.Y. — The state says electric-vehicle charging units are now available at one Syracuse Mirabito convenience store and will soon be available at an upcoming Mirabito location in a Syracuse suburb. New York State hopes that adding more charging stations will “encourage more New Yorkers to drive electric vehicles (EVs).” The Mirabito store at
Become a Central New York Business Journal subscriber and get immediate access to all of our subscriber-only content and much more.
Click here to purchase a paywall bypass link for this article.
SYRACUSE, N.Y. — The state says electric-vehicle charging units are now available at one Syracuse Mirabito convenience store and will soon be available at an upcoming Mirabito location in a Syracuse suburb.
New York State hopes that adding more charging stations will “encourage more New Yorkers to drive electric vehicles (EVs).”
The Mirabito store at 415 E. Brighton Ave. has four stations that are currently open for use. The store serving the northern Syracuse area at 414 Seventh North St. in Salina — which is currently under construction — has three stations that will be available in late October.
Mirabito is a family-owned and operated energy retailer based in Binghamton that operates more than 100 gas station/convenience stores throughout Central New York.
Mirabito will have a total of 19 chargers at five sites, including Castle Creek and Binghamton. An Oneonta site opened in May. The New York Power Authority will construct, own, and operate the EVolve NY charging network in coordination with Mirabito site hosts.
“The goal of our partnership with NYPA and EVolve NY is to help provide New Yorkers with the charging station options they need to confidently drive electric vehicles,” Joe Mirabito, CEO of Mirabito convenience stores, said in a release. “We support and understand the importance of reducing carbon emissions and appreciate the opportunity to be part of the solution. Working together on projects like these will be key to moving the mission forward.”
EVolve NY will have installed nearly 100 chargers across New York by the end of 2021, which will give the state the third-largest, open access (available to all EVs) 150kW+ fast charging network in the U.S. After this EVolve NY buildout phase is complete, New Yorkers will be able to drive any EV across the state using fast chargers capable of recharging their vehicles in 15-to-30 minutes located every 50 miles or less, according to the state.
Stay up-to-date on the companies, people and issues that impact businesses in Syracuse, Central New York and beyond.