Outdoor movies. A riverfront Happy Hour. Oh, and yoga with some goats and puppies.
These are some of the events that are part of a refocused effort to bring more public activities to downtown Rochester.
“Something a little unusual, a little different, get you out of your typical day-to-day to enjoy the river and the warmer weather,” said Galin Brooks, president and CEO for Rochester Downtown Development Corp. “And experience Austin Steward Plaza, we want to make sure to introduce as many people as possible to the great new space right on the Genesee.”
The Sunset Sips and Yoga on the Riverway — both happening in June — are expected to be the first public events at the refurbished plaza, located behind the Wyndham Rochester Downtown, formerly the Holiday Inn on State Street.
The programming is an outgrowth of the failed push to establish a downtown Business Improvement District (or BID). That effort faced strong opposition from some in the community, leading organizers to pull the plug 18 months ago.
But they remained focused on the overall objectives.
“The need is now,” Brooks told WXXI News last spring, as leaders regrouped with an eye toward 2025. “We know that people want to see more from their downtown.”
And that urgency hasn’t gone away. If anything, it has increased, said developer Ken Glazer, whose Buckingham Properties is one of the largest property owners downtown.
“You see a lot of good things going on, but we’re still not attracting a lot of people outside of the events to come downtown,” he said.
Glazer backed the BID and remains convinced that one of its more controversial proposals — for downtown “ambassadors” or guides — still needs to happen in order to help make the area feel more inviting and safe, as well as improve street outreach to those in need of services such as someone to walk them to their car.
“We sort of took a step back and said, ‘Look, we can do this privately. No one says we can’t put people on the street if we’re willing to pay (for) it,’” Glazer said. “And it’s membership. RDDC is membership-funded, so we all feel like it’s worthwhile. … We talk about that a lot.”
The challenge is how to enliven a Center City where the pandemic zapped momentum, emptied offices and accelerated the transition from commercial district to residential neighborhood.
There is money to do the work — but how much is unclear.
The county alone committed $300,000. There is still $900,000 in a state grant left to be disbursed that aimed to promote and revitalize riverfront spaces in connection with the ROC the Riverway series of projects. And then there are major stakeholders, like Glazer.
“We’re still committed,” he said. “We don’t really have a choice but to commit because, again, the urgency is now. [With] any momentum, which we kind of are getting again, we gotta pounce on it and take and use it, because if we lose it, we start going backwards again.”
The epicenter of downtown events — Midday Bash, Movies with a Downtown View, RPO Under the Stars and Fall Fest — is Parcel 5, the former Midtown Mall. Apartments have taken over the former Xerox and Chase towers, now renamed Innovation and Manhattan Squares, respectively.
“But the city isn’t designed to really be a neighborhood,” Glazer said. “We’re trying to get it to be a neighborhood, and that’s just going to take a long time.”
The city-sponsored events also play a role, with popular draws like Party in the Park. And there have been millions of dollars invested in remaking Main Street. RDDC is also looking for ways to support small businesses, with a new program expected to launch in the next month or so. Increased marketing is another objective.
That transition, though, presents obstacles. The former Riverside Hotel is an eyesore awaiting redevelopment, and the recently redone Austin Steward Plaza across the river sits in the shadow of a towering and largely vacant First Federal Plaza.
“It’s really hard to activate a space when you don’t have real density there,” Glazer said. “We have a hard enough time filling Parcel 5 and Washington Square. And there’s people all around.”
At Washington Square RDDC is part of a collaborative effort to bring small-scale, seasonal programming, adding temporary tables and chairs, Brooks said, to “give people a reason to linger.”
Because things are, gradually, coming together.
“I still believe that Rochester is one of those cities that, once it clicks, it’s going to take off, and we’re going to be one of those great cities,” Glazer said. “I expect this summer to be better than last summer downtown, and we’re going to keep growing it.” rochesterdowntown.com/events
Brian Sharp is an editor for WXXI. He can be reached at bsharp@wxxi.org.
This article appears in Dec 1-31, 2024.
