The same company that owns Destiny USA has unveiled updated plans to build a hotel across from the iconic mall.

The updated plans seek a smaller, cheaper hotel than the one The Pyramid Companies, the Syracuse-based company that owns Destiny USA, originally proposed in 2014. Rather than a 255-room hotel, the new plans describe a 209-room hotel, according to a letter sent from a lawyer representing Destiny USA to the Onondaga County Industrial Development Agency (OCIDA).

The hotel will also be less costly under the new plans, as the budget for the project has been adjusted to $48 million. The previous budget was $75 million, according to Syracuse.com.

The project developers are also asking for 12 years of property and sales tax exemptions that total $6.84 million, less than the previous request of $20 million in total exemptions over 20 years, according to the same Syracuse.com article.

Construction for the hotel would begin in May or June and finish by summer 2017, according to Syracuse.com.

The proposed hotel would create 225 construction jobs, including 74 permanent jobs to run the hotel, according to the letter. The letter also said the company has pledged that at least 50 percent of those hired for the 225 jobs will be Syracuse residents.

Jan Ondrich, a Syracuse University professor of economics who has a specialty in urban economics, said in the 30 years he’s lived in central New York he has seen a lot of the region’s malls and hotels fail and become abandoned.

He said the company should be given more than the proposed tax breaks to create more jobs than the number the company projected.

“If a hotel comes to Syracuse, and it’s successful, I think that’s great,” Ondrich said. “It should be given a large amount of tax exemptions, as long as the city can stand it, because we have an employment problem.”

Ondrich said he can see a problem in the potential clientele of the hotel. The Destiny USA mall attracts a large portion of its customers from Canada, he said, and because the exchange rate in Canada has fallen while the rate of the U.S. dollar has risen, he said shopping or staying in the U.S. is now a much more expensive venture for Canadians.

He added that understanding the exchange rate changes in Canada is pivotal to the construction of the hotel because a lack of understanding could lead to another failed hotel that the community is stuck paying for.

Since the hotel plans have been reinitiated, there has been backlash from the Syracuse community. Syracuse Mayor Stephanie Miner criticized the OCIDA’s proposed tax exemption for the hotel in a statement from her office, in which she called the proposal “yet another experiment in a failed economic strategy that enriches developers and leaves the rest of our community behind.”

Miner said in the statement that Destiny USA has received more than $700 million in tax breaks in the construction of “a grand hotel,” among other things, but has “repeatedly walked away from commitments.”

“The people of Syracuse are tired of the false promise of trickle-down development with developers who get rich while our people struggle,” Miner said.

Ondrich said Miner has been in Syracuse for a long time and is not new to failed business endeavors. Miner is asking that the company “has done their homework,” he said.

“She wants a guarantee that abandonment isn’t going to happen,” Ondrich said.

Published on March 22, 2016 at 10:37 pm

Contact Tara: trtolton@syr.edu