One World Garden

Since 2011, Rust2Green Utica (R2G), has been working to implement the vision of the One World Garden (OWG) as a major outdoor public space and cultural destination in downtown Utica. The community design process and resulting design for this special place to be built on 3 vacant city-owned lots on Park Avenue, was undertaken in collaboration with Utica’s Refugee Center with grant monies from the TKF Open Spaces Sacred Spaces Program. It was one of 10 nationwide finalists for a subsequent construction and research grant, but was ultimately not funded. Since then, R2G has secured nearly $1.5 million dollars from NY State Parks and the Environmental Facilities Corporation to construct the project which was slated to begin in Fall 2019 and be completed in 2020.

When realized, One World Garden stands to become a vibrant cultural attraction and expressively creative showpiece. Located in the heart of the Downtown Arts District, it will serve both locals and tourists and be dedicated to community-wide multi-cultural inclusion and diversity as well as healing and restoration. As an outdoor cultural nexus, the garden will feature exceptionally designed gardens, gathering and event spaces and public art elements and features representing and conveying Utica’s diverse cultural identity and heritage. It will be a place of remembering and celebrating unity and the coming together of people from diverse cultures to settle and shape their chosen homeplace of Utica and the Mohawk Valley. Utica’s One World Garden will offer all Uticans—especially those from the refugee and immigrant community—a place to seek retreat, friendship and community.

West2Green Neighborhood Vision

The West2Green Neighborhood Visioning Project–Weaving in What Matters–began as a 6-month collaborative effort involving West Side residents, Cornell’s R2G Capstone Studio and the R2G Utica Urban Studio team working together. Many neighborhood individuals and groups were involved in this highly participatory placemaking process which identified, through neighorhood visioning and dialogue workshops, the area’s distinctive attributes and assets and ways to enhance and develop them using physical design, programming, infrastructure improvements and policy-making.

The process revealed a high level of concern regarding the neighborhood’s economic and social challenges related to environmental degradation, poverty, food insecurity, safety and marginalization. And, concern that the neighborhood lacks full knowledge of what lies ahead in terms of plans for change–by the City, investors, and developers, among others. Many agreed that a lack of dialogue between and among various community interests often adds to an atmosphere of distrust.

The West Side stands at a pivotal moment to take next steps in strengthening its voice in planning the future of the neighborhood and stimulating and fostering its creativity and imagination around the potentials and possibilities of the area so that the next several decades of change reflect its desired identity and sense of place. This is a prime moment to build on the neighborhood’s assets and capture and tell its story as well as remake and reimagine new layers of the urban fabric developing and being created to interweave and unite the stories of then, now, and tomorrow.

R2G aims to keep working with the West Side neighborhood to advance actions identified in the project’s final design and planning report.

Levitt Amp Utica Concerts

R2G’s successful 2015 One World Flower Fest brought partners together to successfully apply for and secure a Levitt Amp grant in 2016 to expand creative placemaking activities in the the Oneida Square neighborhood and city’s arts district. Since then R2G has worked with partners to secure subsequent grants. Utica and the Oneida Square neighborhood have now benefited from being one of just 15 cities, nationwide, to be awarded $25,000 for the last 4 years, by the Levitt Foundation to host a 10-free Levitt AMP Utica summer concert series. This creative placemaking activity is transforming a neglected public space into a thriving destination through the power of free, live music. R2G’s application and partnership with The Community Foundation of Herkimer and Oneida Counties, Inc. added an additional required $25,000 in matching funds to each year of grants for the past 4 seasons.

R2G Collaborative Evaluation Project

Cornell currently has two active R2G community-university partnerships underway in two Upstate cities, Utica and Binghamton, NY. A 2-year grant (2018-2020) from Cornell’s Office of Engagement Initiatives is being used, by Cornell R2G faculty and researchers, working in collaboration with a Utica and Binghamton community-based team, to evaluate R2G’s impacts on students and on each community. The R2G Collaborative Evaluation Project (R2G-CEP) is highly participatory and aims to help all partners better understand and study R2G’s evolution, impacts and outcomes. We are hoping the learning resulting from the evaluation will help us all–university and community alike–better understand where we’ve been and how best to move forward while improving and building on our work.

One World Flower Festival

Cornell R2G students in the 2015 R2G Capstone Landscape Architecture/Community Design Studio worked with the Oneida Square neighborhood’s residents, businesses and the R2G Urban Studio team to produce the first Annual One World Flower Fest as a daylong tactical placemaking event designed to make Oneida Square pulse and beat with activity, creativity, beauty, character and positive energy. Subsequent festivals, spearheaded by R2G and lead partners including Utica Love, have been held in 2016, 2017 and 2018. The festival has attracted hundreds of residents and new visitors and continued to emphasize the important role combined public space programming and design plays in creative placemaking and in creating safer, more people-friendly, inclusive, aesthetically appealing and economically vibrant neighborhood centers.

One World UTICA

Utica is a UN Refugee Resettlement City which now enjoys the distinction of being a true plurality city where 1 in 5 people are foreign born and 44.7% are minorities. One of the biggest challenges it faces, like other cities, is how to align its changing demographics with a new, broader sense of “we” and how best to take proactive steps that nurture diversity, social solidarity, cultural assimilation, inclusion and the expression of its now very diverse multicultural identities. Toward that end, One World Utica is an arts and culture-based economic and community development effort focusing on multi-cultural diversity and inclusion particularly in welcoming public spaces which are considered one of a city’s greatest assets and expressions of its social sustainability. Public space plays a crucial role in bridge-building across differences and furthering the meaning and place identity of neighborhoods and a city as a whole. R2G’s One World Garden, One World Flower Fest and One World-themed creative placemaking on the Genesee Street Corridor, come together as parts of a larger, albeit newly budding, overall citywide One World Utica concept we are beginning to advance.

Mohawk Valley Main Street Program

The R2G Urban Studio has created a scope of work and secured the funds enabling it to take the lead in assisting the City to implement a ($300,000) NYS DOS-sponsored project to establish an inter-municipal Main Street Program in the surrounding region. The objective is to provide the necessary resources to help revitalize economically distressed downtowns in cities, towns and villages. and strengthen local capacity while engaging both resident and business communities.  As of 2019, the City has put this project completely on HOLD.

Genesee Street Corridor One World Creative Placemaking and Artscapingin Downtown on Genesee Street Corridor

This NYS State and Municipal (SAM) Facilities Program initiative, is devoted to creative placemaking enhancements on Genesee Street. R2G developed Its integrated theme, spatial plan and streetscape components enabling $500K in funding to be secured. Proposed to be designed and built are a series of diverse visually artistic and interlinked nodes inviting street life and activity–seating, plantings, artful crosswalks, and public art elements including art totems and a mural. All elements will embrace a “One World Utica” theme. The project, still in early planning stages, will add life, identity, connectivity, and distinction to 10 blocks of Genesee Street, from Franklin Square to Oneida Square

Artspace Utica

Building on R2G’s priority arts and culture development agenda, borne out of our community’s distinctive arts and culture assets, R2G Utica worked with the arts community to secure funding from the Community Foundation for an Artspace feasibility study. The national group conducted their study concluding that Utica is well-positioned to “reboot” itself and build a robust creative economy that attracts arts and culture visitors, retains recent creative graduates from local colleges, welcomes younger creative professionals, and enhances the regional economy by constructing designated live/work artist facilities. Artspace, which is now committed to developing 40 live-work artists spaces in downtown Utica, is now in the site-selection phase of their transformative project. For nearly 3 years R2G has been a key mobilizer of this important initiative which is getting closer to realization.

REACH CENTER-Creative Arts Incubator

Rome Up & Running (RUR) has partnered with 4 Elements Studio of Utica and R2G to accelerate the development of a uniquely-designed Rome-Utica Creative Arts Incubator in the the 28,000-sq. ft.) REACH Center on W. Dominick Street in Rome – enabling an expansion of 4-Element’s Utica incubator space. A REACH Center Art Gallery, managed by 4 Elements Studio, opened in December 2017.  R2G acquired $550K in funding for façade improvements and interior renovations which will provide a minimum of ten maker spaces, classroom and shared office spaces for entrepreneurs and non-profits and community spaces to assist regional creatives to produce, present and exhibit temporary works and cultural activities, including interactive on-site and remote classes and workshops for all ages and abilities. Other project partners, including the MVCC ThINCubator, will provide on-site and remote business development and marketing education and training as the project progresses.

Downtown Sustainability Plan

A research team of R2G Cornell University professors and students completed a Phase I analysis of a multi-block portion of Utica’s downtown, including an assessment of geothermal and high level heating and cooling systems for commercial and residential buildings and a LEED neighborhood livability audit addressing streetscapes, public spaces, parks, green infrastructure, and the urban fabric. Building on this work, R2G successfully applied and received New York State funding for the City of Utica to undertake a downtown sustainability plan focused on the blocks surrounding the Stanley Theatre and amounting to $50,000.

Learning Cities Initiative

R2G has joined Cornell faculty members from CLASP (Community Learning and Service Partnership) to participate in conversations and exploration of Utica becoming on of the first US communities to join UNESCO’s Global Network of Learning Cities. The vision of Learning Cities is to promote lifelong learning for all. We are inspired by Cork, Ireland which we are hoping will be mentoring Utica as part of exploring this idea. Cork has made a firm commitment at all levels to create learning opportunities for all knowing that education and lifelong learning are a key means to reduce social inequalities, improve social inclusion, boost economic growth and improve the lives of all citizens. As a Learning City, Cork provides its citizens access to a broad array of learning opportunities and continues to design and offer ever more diverse and exciting learning projects, events and programs for citizens and visitors too.