*EDITOR’S NOTE: This story was updated to information from the city of Utica and Mayor Michael Galime.
The “Nexus Neighborhood” project (NN) was included in and named a Mohawk Valley “anchor” project in the Tourism category within the total $32M Mohawk Valley Region Economic District’s ACHIEVE award, part of the New York State inaugural ACHIEVE award program (“Advancing Collaboration for High-Impact Initiatives for Economic Visions & Expansion”). NN takes the next step east from the Utica University Nexus Center (Nexus) down Oriskany Boulevard as the “U-District” comes to life in downtown Utica.
The NN endeavor, a collaboration between the City of Utica and the Lahinch Group LLC, expands on Oneida County Executive Anthony Picente’s long-time vision for “the U-District,” which was inspired by the renovation of the Utica Memorial Auditorium, now the Adirondack Bank Center (the Aud), a partnership between Oneida County, the Upper Mohawk Valley Memorial Auditorium Authority (UMVMAA) and Mohawk Valley Garden (MVG), a private enterprise founded and helmed by retired NHL goalie and metro-Utica native Robert Esche.
“Big” win for the City of Utica
Utica Mayor Michael Galime, who was motivated when a smaller grant proposal aspiring to resurrect the Bagg’s Square neighborhood wasn’t funded to “set the sights of the city on something much bigger,” targeted the inaugural ACHIEVE awards in 2025, partnering with Lahinch Group, who were already engaged in redevelopment in the district.
According to Galime, the distribution amounts of the $32M award between grantees are still being finalized, but whatever that outcome, he calls it “one of the biggest awards” the city of Utica has ever won and the sum total of ACHIEVE funding won by Mohawk Valley region projects the most funding “the six-county region has seen since the Wynn Hospital project.”
Crediting his city team, the Mohawk Valley Regional Development Council, the Empire State Development Corporation, and several collaborators across New York State agencies, Galime called the ACHIEVE proposal “great work” and summed the win to simply say, “we did it!”
‘The Nexus Neighborhood’
According to the Mohawk Valley Regional Economic Development Council 2025 Annual Report and ACHIEVE Competition Proposal (MVREDC), the footprint of the Nexus Neighborhood vision is anchored at 222 Liberty Street. It spans 6 acres and 3 city blocks between – for context – “the Aud” and Utica Coffee Roasting Company, a local business among the first to wager on the U-District vision.
The proposal, which Galime shared he and his team conceived and co-wrote in partnership with Lahinch, includes a new hotel with a pedestrian skybridge connecting it to the Nexus Center, a state-of-the-art sports medicine facility, and adjacent retail, all employing adaptive reuse of historic structures and spaces.
“On behalf of the entire Regional Council, we are excited and grateful for the support from Governor Hochul, ESD and its state agency partners; We are also very proud that our ‘Rooted in the Mohawk Valley’ proposal was chosen among this year’s ACHIEVE awardees,” said Mohawk Valley Regional Economic Development Council Co-Chairs Larry Gilroy and Dr. Marion Terenzio in a statement. “These collective successes reflect the council’s continued efforts to leverage regional strengths, guided by our strategic plan, to generate new and sustainable economic growth throughout the Mohawk Valley.”
The total budget project budget rings up at $132,498,775, with a sponsor investment of $107,498.775. Its width bridging over to Oriskany Street West to the Liberty Street annex on one side of “the Aud” and Whitesboro Street on the other. From there it is a short walk – less than half a mile – to Utica’s historic Bagg’s Square, Utica Train Station, and trendy eateries including “The Tailor and the Cook.”
The ‘Nexus Neighborhood’ project takes one step further east on West Oriskany Boulevard from Nexus as the U-District, property by parcel, partner by plan, brick by brick, continues to come to life.
The U-District
The U-District as imagined is a primarily walkable suite of services, restaurant, retail, and entertainment venues, orbiting the Aud as their sun. The inaugural valence in the vision headed east down Oriskany Street West, transforming several blighted blocks leading to the Boehlert Transportation Center at Union Station (Utica Train Station), a New York State and National historic landmark. The first step was no more than a step or two from the east-facing exit of the Aud, the recently abandoned Tartan Textile Mill at 111 Charles Street, once a titan in Utica’s preeminent textile industry, known as the producer of plaid. Oneida County partnered with MVG to procure the Aud-adjacent parcel and transform it into Nexus, a state-of-the-art youth sports tournament destination that opened in Nov., 2022.
Just under a year later, after a battery of battles fought by the City of Utica, Oneida County and Mohawk Valley Health System with opponents to the project, Utica welcomed Wynn Hospital on Oct. 29, 2023, just a block away from the Aud and Nexus.
Restoration of historic industrial-era buildings in Bagg’s Square, Utica’s oldest and once most vibrant residential neighborhood, have attracted restaurants such as Bagg’s Square Brewery and The Tailor and the Cook, who shared that they have “tailored” their business to meet the needs created by Nexus Center visitors.
“But it’s not just about the visitors and the weekends,” said Picente, referring to families from all over the Northeast and Canada coming to Utica for sports events at Nexus. “It’s about the community. It’s about having things for all of us to do.”
NN partner and sponsor of the ACHIEVE award, Lahinch Group, a Syracuse-based real estate development firm, is already invested in the U-District, having restored and renovated 121 Hotel Street into mixed-use residential-retail and 600 State Street, once home to the Utica Steam Cotton Mill, now the locale of the Brooklyn Pickle restaurant and state-of-the-art apartments.
Hotel Street LLC, under the umbrella of Lahinch, also won a $2M New York State REDC grant to continue its restoration/renovation/new-use development of the historic Bagg’s Square neighborhood.
Assured Picente, “The state dollars will get it moving!”
The U-District a ‘crazy vision’ coming to life
“I had some crazy visions that people struck down and thought were ridiculous,” recalls Picente.
The U-District was one of those “hairbrained ideas.”
Picente envisioned connecting “the Aud” to the “Utica Train Station” and the historic Bagg’s Square neighborhood by reimaging the expanse of blighted, many abandoned, industrial-era structures staggered with gaps – like missing teeth – that for decades have stood like ghosts haunting the once prosperous, progressive city they once sheltered, reminding it – despite the broken bricks, crumbling concrete, plywood-plastered windows and graffiti-tagged walls – who it once was … and could still be.
And it all began with bringing hockey back to “the Aud.”
“A lot of people didn’t think hockey could succeed a second time around,” said Picente, who recalled how the Utica and Mohawk Valley communities had supported AHL professional hockey in the 1990s.
Utica-born Robert Esche – who nurtured his love of hockey here before taking it on the road after being drafted out of Whitesboro High School by the NHL Phoenix Coyotes to begin an 8-year NHL career with with Phoenix, then the Philadelphia Flyers – was not one of those people.
Esche came home after retiring from the NHL, returning with the elixir that Utica so sorely needed, a love for his birthplace and his sport, using one to breathe new life into the other.
Esche set his sights on bringing professional hockey back to the Aud and launched the mission with the founding of Mohawk Valley Garden. He worked with Oneida County, the Upper Mohawk Valley Memorial Auditorium Authority, and the City of Utica not only to bring AHL hockey back to town, but to bring Top 20 NCAA Division III hockey to “the Aud” by first making it the Utica University Pioneers Men’s Hockey Team home ice, then making Nexus the women’s team home ice. A deal with Utica University involved a naming” commitment re-dubbing the destination “Utica University Nexus Center.”
Picente promises that the ‘players’ associated with Nexus Neighborhood, together with other New York State grant recipients – Mohawk Valley Garden for the restoration and new use of the 1933 Canal Building as an events center, a focal point of the Harbor Point development, and LaHinch d/b/a Hotel Street LLC, in partnership with the City of Utica – are partners in the process.
“Those three grants will collaborate together,” said Picente, “to bring the vision of the U-District to life.”
Nexus Neighborhood timeline
The timeline for the NN project involves spending 2026 exploring logistics, performing studies, securing all approvals needed to move forward. If all goes as planned, ground should break in 2027, and construction should be completed sometime in spring of 2028.
“We knew we had something, we had the land, we were just trying to figure out, it was between us, the county, Rob, his partners, the Aud authority, the City of Utica,” said Picente “we were all on the same page.”
Picente repeated his perspective on the progress.
“The greatest problem to have.”
“More visitors to the region, more things to do, more revenue, more people possibly deciding they’d like to live here,” said Picente. “That’s what the Nexus Neighborhood is designed to do.”
He concluded, “and I’m confident … it will.”
This article originally appeared on Observer-Dispatch: $130M Nexus Neighborhood next step in U-District vision for Utica
Reporting by Cara Dolan Berry, Utica Observer Dispatch / Observer-Dispatch
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