Senior housing planned for historic convent and former Maria Regina College site in Syracuse:
https://www.syracuse.com/news/2022/0...-syracuse.html
Finally, someone is developing this North Side building. Personally, I wish it could have been used for a school, but it is property that should have been developed a long time ago.
Street view:
https://www.google.com/maps/@43.0744...7i16384!8i8192
From the article: "A Rochester company is making plans to build senior housing at the sprawling but vacant North Side campus that formerly housed St. Anthony’s Convent and Maria Regina College.
Family-owned Home Leasing LLC said it has an agreement to purchase the 8-acre campus at the northeast corner of Court Street and Grant Boulevard from Syracuse developer Mark Congel for an undisclosed price.
CEO Bret Garwood said the company plans to convert the site’s buildings into 170 one-bedroom apartments for people aged 55 and over. Construction likely will start in 2023 and take two years to complete, he said.
The apartments will have monthly rents ranging from the $600s to $1,000, according to Garwood. Leasing will be restricted to people with incomes below the area’s median household income of $38,000, he said.
Syracuse Mayor Ben Walsh and the city Department of Neighborhood and Business Development will hold a public information meeting about the company’s plans at 5:30 today (Wednesday, March 16, 2022) in the gymnasium at the nearby Magnarelli Community Center at McChesney Park at 2308 Grant Blvd.
Garwood said the company will purchase the property after assembling financing for the project. The financing will include historic preservation and low-income tax credits, he said.
Details of the development are still being worked out, but Garwood said all the buildings on the campus, except for a chapel built in 1949, will be transformed into apartments.
“We see the campus as a place that’s been long vacant and needs a comprehensive look to transform it into a real asset in the Syracuse community,” he said.
He said the company has not decided what to do with the chapel, which features gorgeous stained-glass windows.
“It’s a beautiful chapel, but it wants to be a church,” he said.
The Sisters of St. Francis occupied the campus and operated an assisted living facility for its older members until moving to new, leased quarters in Salina in June of 2014. The property has been mostly vacant since then.
Congel bought the campus from the sisters in 2015 with the intention of transforming its buildings into 175 apartments, but those plans never materialized.
The site contains six buildings totaling 226,196 square feet of space. The oldest and most prominent is the former St. Anthony’ s Convent, also known as the “motherhouse.” The 48,645-square-foot, four-story building was designed by famed Syracuse architect Archimedes Russell and built in 1896.
The newest, called the Franciscan Center, was constructed in 1970 as a religious education facility. It’s the second biggest building on the property, consisting of three stories totaling 50,081 square feet of space.
A fire broke out on the center’s first floor on Tuesday. Syracuse firefighters put the fire out within 25 minutes, but not before the entire building filled with smoke. The department said its Fire Investigation Bureau is working to determine the cause. No other buildings were damaged.
For many years, the site was also the home of Maria Regina College. The Catholic junior college for women was founded in 1961 and closed in 1988 due to declining enrollment and financial difficulties.
Founded in 2003 by Nelson Leenhouts, Home Leasing has developed and built over 30 properties and manages 3,000 apartments across New York, Pennsylvania and Maryland. It specializes in converting existing buildings into senior housing."
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