CHITTENANGO, NY. Mayor Louis Cianfrocco stood at the Village Hall at 222 Genesee Street on May 13 and walked residents through how the $4.5 million New York Forward grant the village won last year will land on the ground. The Wizard of Oz birthplace will rebuild the All Things Oz Museum, put an indoor recreation center at Stooks Park, finish the missing stretch of its Yellow Brick Road, and finance new upper-story housing along Genesee Street. None of it has broken ground. All of it now has line items.
Cianfrocco told WSYR-TV the village had never moved this kind of money before. “We’re not used to dealing in millions of dollars,” he said. “It’s a once-in-a-generation opportunity for a village our size.”
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The Madison County village of roughly 5,000 residents was named one of three Central New York winners of state downtown funding in March 2025. The bigger announcement that day named the Village of Pulaski in Oswego County the recipient of a $10 million Downtown Revitalization Initiative award and the Village of Marathon in Cortland County the recipient of a second $4.5 million NY Forward award alongside Chittenango. The combined $19 million package was announced by Governor Kathy Hochul, Secretary of State Walter T. Mosley, Empire State Development President Hope Knight, and Homes and Community Renewal Commissioner RuthAnne Visnauskas at a CNY ceremony attended by State Senators Joseph Griffo and Lea Webb and Assembly Members Will Barclay and Brian Miller.
The intervening 14 months were spent on a strategic investment planning process required by the state. The May 13 rollout is when the planning produced approved projects with budgets.
What The $4.5 Million Buys In Chittenango
The Strategic Investment Plan approved by the village board carries four headline projects. First is a full upgrade and expansion of the All Things Oz Museum, which sits a short walk from the village center. Author L. Frank Baum was born in Chittenango on May 15, 1856, and the museum has been the main civic anchor of the village’s Wizard of Oz heritage since it opened in its current form. The upgrade scope includes interior gallery rebuild, a programmable exhibit space for traveling content, ADA-compliant access throughout, and storage for a growing collection of Baum-era memorabilia.
Second is a new indoor recreation center at Stooks Park. The center is designed around a multi-use indoor court that can flip between basketball, pickleball, and indoor soccer, plus locker rooms, a concession area, and tiered seating. For a village whose nearest comparable indoor facility is the YMCA in Manlius, the new building is meant to keep recreational dollars and youth programming inside Chittenango year-round.
Third is an extension of the village’s Yellow Brick Road, the painted-path public artwork that runs between Wizard of Oz heritage sites and currently breaks off at two distinct points. The state grant funds the completion of those two gaps so the path runs continuously between the All Things Oz Museum, the Oz-Stravaganza festival staging area, the village’s downtown businesses, and Stooks Park.
Fourth, and most significant for the village’s residential base, is a new upper-story housing program along Genesee Street. The model has been used successfully in NY Forward villages elsewhere in the state, in which the village uses grant dollars to underwrite the renovation of second and third floors above ground-floor retail. The owners of qualifying buildings can apply for a share of grant funds to make the upper floors livable apartments, adding to the rental housing stock without changing the historic streetscape.
Pulaski’s Larger $10 Million Award
Pulaski, an Oswego County village of roughly 2,300 sitting on the Salmon River, received the full $10 million Downtown Revitalization Initiative award in the same announcement. The DRI program is a step above NY Forward in both award size and project complexity. The village’s strategic plan is targeting waterfront access on the Salmon River corridor, mixed-use redevelopment along Bridge Street, public-art and cultural programming, and a workforce-housing component.
Pulaski Mayor Jan Tighe said in the state’s official announcement that the award “is providing the opportunity for the Village of Pulaski to make investments that will enhance our community but also create new opportunities for growth.” The strategic plan was due to state reviewers by the end of 2025, and construction-phase contracts are expected to begin running in the second half of 2026.
How NY Forward And DRI Actually Differ
The state runs the two programs side by side. Downtown Revitalization Initiative awards have been $10 million each since the program launched in 2016. NY Forward awards started in 2022 at $4.5 million each and were designed specifically for smaller villages and hamlets where a $10 million DRI grant is too large to absorb. The application process is similar but the projects funded under NY Forward tend to be smaller, more numerous, and more directly tied to existing village assets. The state’s Department of State and Homes and Community Renewal jointly administer both programs.
The economic theory behind both programs is straightforward. State dollars fund the public-realm and anchor-building work that private developers will not finance on their own, and the upgraded streetscape then attracts private investment that adds to the village’s tax base. The state Office of the Governor cites a statewide track record across nine rounds of DRI funding of $4 in private investment for every $1 in state grant money, although results vary widely between municipalities and the state’s own reporting on NY Forward outcomes is still preliminary.
Madison County Reaction And Process Notes
The Madison County Planning Board provided grant-writing and technical assistance to the village throughout the 2024 application cycle. The village credited the county board in its announcement, citing the staff capacity gap that a village the size of Chittenango faces when applying for state grants. Without the county-level support, smaller villages routinely lose out to larger municipalities with full-time grant writers on staff.
The village’s Strategic Investment Plan went through three rounds of public input, including two town-hall sessions and a survey period. The village board adopted the final plan at its April 2026 meeting, which cleared the path for the May 13 public announcement of approved projects.
Construction Timeline And Local Hiring
None of the four projects has broken ground yet. The Genesee Street upper-story housing pilot is expected to be the first to launch, with applications from building owners opening this summer and the first renovation contracts on the books before the end of 2026. The All Things Oz Museum upgrade will follow on a phased schedule that does not interrupt the annual Oz-Stravaganza festival, which draws tens of thousands of visitors to the village each June. The Stooks Park indoor recreation center has the longest design-and-build timeline of the four projects, with construction unlikely to start before mid-2027.
The grant agreement includes a local-hiring preference for contractors based in Madison and Onondaga counties, although the state cannot legally mandate a strict local-only requirement on competitively bid public construction work. The village’s planning office is preparing a vendor list and will host an information session for area builders before the first bid packages go out.
What Residents Should Know About Their Own Properties
The upper-story housing program is the part of the package that most directly touches private property owners along Genesee Street. The state grant funds a portion, not the entire cost, of qualifying renovations. Owners typically contribute matching dollars or take on financing for the balance. The village will publish the application criteria, the percentage of grant share available per unit, and the eligibility map identifying which buildings qualify in advance of the application opening this summer.
For commercial tenants on Genesee Street, the village has stated that no building owner will be forced to participate, and that the program is structured around voluntary participation. Tenants whose buildings are renovated will be given relocation assistance during construction if their leases are affected.
The Pulaski Comparison And What CNY Should Watch
The contrast between the Chittenango and Pulaski plans is instructive for other CNY villages considering future application cycles. Pulaski’s $10 million is anchored by a waterfront access project on the Salmon River, which is the village’s largest natural asset and the centerpiece of its annual salmon fishing economy. Chittenango’s $4.5 million is anchored by a literary and cultural asset, the All Things Oz Museum, and by year-round indoor recreation in a village whose downtown otherwise empties out after dark. The two plans are similarly ambitious but structurally different.
The state’s next NY Forward application cycle is expected to open in late 2026, and small villages across Central New York are watching the Chittenango and Marathon project rollouts as the working examples of what a village-scale strategic plan should look like. The next CNY application cycle is likely to draw heavy competition from villages in Onondaga, Madison, Oswego, Cayuga, and Cortland counties.
Sources & Verification
- WSYR-TV NewsChannel 9: “‘We’re not used to dealing in millions of dollars’: Villages of Chittenango, Pulaski excited to start building with new state funding,” May 13, 2026, localsyr.com
- Office of the Governor of New York: “Governor Hochul Announces Central New York Winners of Downtown Revitalization Initiative and NY Forward Program,” governor.ny.gov
- Village of Chittenango official announcement: “Chittenango N.Y. Awarded $4.5 Million NY Forward Grant for Downtown Revitalization,” chittenango.gov
- WKTV: “Chittenango Reveals Plans for $4.5M New York Forward Grant,” wktv.com
- Rome Daily Sentinel: “Chittenango awarded $4.5M through NY Forward program,” romesentinel.com
- New York State Homes and Community Renewal joint announcement, NY Forward and DRI program documentation
