The War Memorial, located in Downtown Syracuse.

Around the country, hometown fans seem to fall in love with their team’s old arena.  Los Angeles fans love Dodger Stadium.  People in Boston love Fenway Park.  And basketball fans in Philadelphia love the experience of the old Palestra.  But here in Syracuse, the old arena downtown has fallen out of favor.  The War Memorial Arena, once the center for downtown entertainment, has become an afterthought.

The CEO of the OnCenter Complex, Terri Toennies, said she has been doing her best to change the public perception of the arena.  She, probably better than anyone else, knows changes and repairs have to be made on both on a large and small scale.  When asked about something as simple as the restrooms, Toennies expressed concern, “A lot of issues sometimes when we over capacitate to six thousand plus people, we have that many people running, it is kinda tough sometimes to keep all the restrooms from overflowing and having issues,” she said “And that’s bad.”

The main problem: the multiple needs for the arena means the price for repairing the building continues to climb.  The auditorium of the arena needs to be painted, and that costs one hundred thousand dollars.  The glass and dasher system for hockey games is a one hundred and fifty thousand dollar repair.  The zamboni machines for the ice are 16 years old and cost ninety thousand a piece.  The new video scoreboard will cost over seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars.  These projects and the list of others total a budget sheet that reads over twelve million dollars.

Toennies and are her staff have a five year plan to try and turn the place around and fill it with new and exciting events, but they also understand that it is going to take a lot of hard work to get that plan rolling.  County funding is very difficult to come by as it took months to strike a deal for the scoreboard.  So the OnCenter and the Syracuse Crunch, the main users of the arena, need to find other ways to raise funds.  Danielle Goss, the Director of Operations at the War Memorial, while hoping for the legislators to provide chunks of funds, realizes other plans like adding a dollar to each ticket is a more realistic fundraiser.

And the Crunch, while they understand that the arena is old and in desperate need of repair, want to stay in Syracuse.  Last year they signed a ten-year lease to stay and play at the War Memorial that will keep the team in town until at least the end of the 2018-2019 season.  The Vice President of the Crunch Jim Sarosy said it was very important for the Crunch to stay in Syracuse because of the incredible support the team receives.  He said the team is working with the OnCenter to improve the fan experience while at the War Memorial.

Mike DeSumma

SYRACUSE, NY- One month after the doors to her parish sealed, young Reena Tretler joined hands with her fellow parishioners in the shadow of St. Andrew the Apostle Church.

Like many there, she didn’t hesitate to voice her frustration with the Syracuse Diocese’s decision that they would never reopen.

“Out of all the other churches we’ve done so much to help everyone else,” Tretler said, “We’ve done just so much for the neighborhood. I can’t help but feel that this is completely wrong.”

The church, which is located on Alder Street on the city’s south side, is the latest parish to be closed in the diocese’s plans for church consolidation.

The downsizing comes as a result of a number of pitfalls that church leaders are facing due to the rising costs of parish upkeep as well as dwindling numbers of priests and parishioners.

In 2007, Catholic leaders unveiled a plan that would lead to the closure of 40 churches over a period of three years. So far, nearly three quarters of those churches have been shut down and protest from area parishioners have ensued.

St. Andrew’s closed last month and its congregation was merged into that of St. Lucy’s Parish on Gifford Street. Both churches had long been linked and served by a single priest. Leaders in the diocese cited a “one parish, one priest” stipulation as the reason for the closure.

But that didn’t sit well for many longtime parishioners of St. Andrew’s who say that was no reason to sacrifice the vibrancy of their parish, which had a long history of social activism.

“We were a solvent parish with a lot of lay participation,” Estelle Hahn said. “It’s not the hierarchy who is church. It’s the people who are church and to not listen to the people is just unforgivable.”

Modern Day Pitfalls

St. Andrew’s and St. Lucy’s were just one of many pairs of churches sharing a priest.

Linked parishes were set up by the diocese as a means of dealing with the huge drop in men going into the vocation. By next year, it is estimated that only 100 priests will be left in the Syracuse Diocese to serve its well over 200,000 Catholics. That is in stark contrast to the near 400 priests that served in the 1970s.

Coupled with the shortage of priests is a lack of parishioners to fill pews on Sundays—specifically younger Catholics to supplement a mostly aging church body.

Parishioners at other parishes that are currently sharing a priest, like St. John the Baptist on the city’s north side, see these trends as signs of the inevitable: more churches will be closing soon.

“I mean the costs are still there but unfortunately the congregations are smaller and smaller,” said Parish Life member Jerry Mott, “along with the shortage of priests it makes it very difficult for parishes to survive.”

Katie Alexander

Skaneateles, N.Y. —Rose Burtless, head milker at Elmer Richards and Sons Dairy Farm in Skaneateles, said her farm is lucky. She said as a dairy farm, it isn’t as negatively affected by the poor economy as many of the nation’s other industries.
Burtless explains that jobs cannot be cut in dairy farming. There will always be a demand for milk, and the job of caring for dairy cows will never disappear. Burtless said she is optimistic about the financial future of dairy farming.
Yet across the country, the low demand for milk means the profit dairy farmers can receive for their products is shrinking. “Dairy farms are heading into one of their worst years ever,” according to an article in the Syracuse Post-Standard earlier this month.

When we spoke to her, however, Burtless was so confident about the future of dairy farming that she said the people who have lost jobs in the current recession should be looking for jobs on dairy farms –that is, if they can handle the workload.

Burtless describes herself as a jack-of-all trades because she does a little bit of everything on the farm. She’s involved in many aspects of caring for both calves and cows, including vaccinating, ear tagging, and, of course, milking.
When we visited the farm, she was marking cows in heat so the breeder would have an easier time finding them the next day. This system of marking involves using different color paint — green for cows that need to be bred this afternoon, and orange for cows that can wait until tomorrow morning.

Burtless says the gestation period for a cow is nine months, and each cow spends at least 55 days with its calf. She said when it comes to breeding and milking, it’s at least a 305 day cycle from one conception to the next.
As of November, Burtless said Elmer Richards and Sons was doing well, and she was sure she would have a job helping with breeding and milking, among other duties, in the future.