Business owners call city’s plan to replace parking garage with apartment building part of ‘pie in the sky’ vision for downtown

The Seneca Street parking garage is in the middle of a tug of war. The Ithaca Common Council is moving ahead with plans to try to replace the decaying garage with a housing development without a parking requirement. Downtown Ithaca businesses are fighting back. They argue that the loss of publicly accessible parking will harm commerce on the Ithaca Commons, the city’s commercial and pedestrian corridor. The 425-space parking garage is past its useful lifespan of 30 to 50 years. It was shut down in April after debris began to fall from the 53-year-old garage’s upper floors. City officials say downtown parking remains underutilized, even with the garage closed, and that the cost of repairing or replacing the structure would be prohibitive. They also argue that the garage’s downtown location presents a unique development opportunity.

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