Mayor Galime spring announcement of strategy to improve Oriskany St. corridor

UTICA -- Oriskany St, Utica’s Western Gateway, is experiencing a renaissance of interest from new and existing business owners.  As part of the strategy to support private investment, Mayor Galime is publicly iterating the ongoing three-pronged approach to clean up, attract commerce to, and enhance the functionality of the corridor.

The elements of that strategy are as follows:

• Increased codes presence and enforcement: Since 2024, the Department of Codes Enforcement has made more than six dozen visits to Oriskany Street, resulting in 17 documented violations. This spring, the goal is to resolve some of the most complex violations, including cleaning up the nearby railroad tracks, ensuring all auto-related businesses are neat and cars are stored on non-permeable surfaces, and expanding tools to more effectively prosecute out-of-state owners.

• Strategic marketing of City-owned property: The City owns the former Mele Manufacturing site next to Dollar General, and it has been overgrown and unkempt for years. The City established a maintenance schedule for the property last year, and has active plans to sell the property to a reputable owner.

• Enhance the surrounding residential neighborhood: The lifeblood of any corridor is the neighborhood that surrounds it. The City is actively working with partners to permanently fix the shuttered bridge on Barnes Ave. Additionally, the City plans to take steps to clean and enhance the residential streets behind Oriskany Street.

Oriskany Street has gained momentum as a commercial corridor with several new businesses, facades, and an award-winning state infrastructure project to make traffic flow more smoothly. These improvements have given birth to the Fitness Mill Complex, Moto World, Urbanik’s (Meldrim’s) Paint, and an under-construction mixed-use development at the Dunlop Tire Factory building – among many other businesses such as Sacco’s Locksmith, Fahy Kitchens, and Noble Gas Solutions. Capitalizing on that momentum is the impetus behind the Mayor’s new efforts:

Mayor Michael P. Galime said: “Oriskany Street has proven it can support a wide variety of commercial and residential interests, and it is time to take the next step. It is one of the gateways to the City of Utica and particularly, its downtown and entertainment districts. With Harbor Point on track to open this summer and the area surrounding the Union Station undergoing a dramatic facelift, it makes sense that the western gateway undergoes a similar improvement. We’ll be working hard to see to it that improvement continues this year.”