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Progress on Onondaga Amphitheater Despite Obstacles

  Progress continues on Onondaga County’s Amphitheater project…despite winter weather and environmental concerns.  WAER’s Chris Bolt reports local contractors can also find out how to get involved tonight.

If you walk by the Onondaga Lake-shore area where the county hopes to build an amphitheater, you won’t see any grandstands or stage being built.  But that doesn’t mean progress isn’t underway.  In fact County Executive Joanie Mahoney says not a day goes by that the project isn’t moving forward.  That’s despite some toxics and pollution problems Honeywell has to deal with as part of the lake cleanup.

“It’s not as simple as: we own this land and we would like you to build an amphitheater.  It’s who else has responsibility to the community to help with this clean-up, because the clean-up is ongoing and now part of this is remediating the site.  That complication, we don’t want that to slow us down.”

A contractor has been chosen – though a final contract is not in place.  The county is also wasting no time recruiting some of the local firms that might be doing electrical or plumbing work, trucking 0r other construction…especially minority and women-owned firms.

“It’s a commitment we made to the state when we took this project on.  The state has very aggressive goals for minority and women-owned business participation.  We intend to meet those goals and we’re doing it be actively going out an advertising the need that we have for folks in different trades.” 

The county hosts an informational meeting tonight for minority and women contractors.  It takes place at the Oncenter from 5:30 to 8:30.

Chris Bolt, Ed.D. has proudly been covering the Central New York community and mentoring students for more than 30 years. His career in public media started as a student volunteer, then as a reporter/producer. He has been the news director for WAER since 1995. Dedicated to keeping local news coverage alive, Chris also has a passion for education, having trained, mentored and provided a platform for growth to more than a thousand students. Career highlights include having work appear on NPR, CBS, ABC and other news networks, winning numerous local and state journalism awards.
John Smith has been waking up WAER listeners for a long time as our Local Co-Host of Morning Edition with timely news and information, working alongside student Sportscasters from the Newhouse School.