Landmark Properties reveals initial Temple Concord plans

Landmark Properties, the real estate firm that bought the Temple Concord building this past summer, proposed its first draft of plans last month for the property as a luxury student apartment complex.

In big cities across the country, religious buildings are increasingly being sold to developers and transformed into apartments and hotels, Vice Chairman of the Syracuse Landmark Preservation Board Rob Haley said. As congregations often struggle to make enough money to keep their buildings, developers are seizing the business opportunity to turn these buildings into attractive living spaces for the public.

Rabbi Daniel Fellman of the Temple Concord Syracuse and Cheri Lass, the executive director, did not respond to multiple phone and email requests for comment. Cantor Kari Siegel Eglash of the Temple Concord Syracuse said that leaders of the congregation no longer taking any requests for comments or interviews from student journalists.

Landmark Properties and CUBE 3, the architecture team that it hired for the project, presented their tentative plans for the historic temple to the Syracuse Landmark Preservation Board.

In the first draft of plans, CUBE 3 team members showed detailed drawings of what the temple would look like after the hypothetical construction was completed. The luxury student apartment complex would be at most eight stories tall, with 202 units, as well as ground floor parking and a glass fitness building. The structure would surround two sides of the temple.

“We want to save good synergy between the old and the new,” said John Harding, the senior associate principal of CUBE 3.

One presentation slide read that the potential apartment complex “creates a modest backdrop for the sanctuary,” and that the final property would “use a contrast of heavy vs. light, modern vs. historic to create a visual hierarchy.”

Members of the Board questioned the temple’s position at the center of this imposing modern building.

“Right now, that building is towering over what’s next door to it,” board member Julia Haftka-Marshall said.

Those on the development team of the said several times during the meeting that they will try to preserve the character of the historic temple as much as possible throughout the process of renovation.

“Where is that on your priority list?” Landmark Preservation Board member Lisa Tonzi asked.

After a beat, James Trasher, a senior associate at the engineering consulting firm Clough Harbour & Associates (CHA), chimed in.

“It’s at the top of our list,” Trasher said.

“I think we realize that this is a very unique space and that the project would be really successful if it was integrated appropriately with the temple,” Harding added.

The Temple Concord Syracuse has been in the city since the mid-1800s. Today, organized religious groups across the country are facing an overall shortage of money, and some congregations have made the decision to sell their place of worship in order to protect the congregation.

“Religious buildings are under pressure of being lost. So many of them are being converted because of their inherent quality and character, for commercial uses, like theaters,” Haley said.

An undecided factor that worried board members was whether the temple will be attached to the apartment complex in some way, or left free-standing. But either way, the plan that Landmark Properties presented would require a partial demolition; getting rid of all of the sections of the temple that were added in the 1920s and 1960s.

“The entire complex is on the national register, so partial demolition would trigger a local protected site review from the board, just so that you’re aware of that,” Auwaerter said to the developers.

Designating the property as a local protected site would instill further regulations and limitations for Landmark Properties and CUBE 3, regarding how they may change or renovate the temple.

Neither Landmark Properties nor CUBE 3 know what the function of the temple will be.

It will be used for something, though, Harding said, and CUBE 3 is currently discussing ideas of how the temple can be incorporated into the project.

“The ambiguity of the future of the actual structure is concerning to me. I feel like: it’s not an afterthought, but it’s not the core of the project. I’m concerned about that,” Tonzi said. “I don’t want it to go, and just sit and sit and sit, and not have an absolute connection to the project.”