After six years of legal fights, the ShoppingTown site cleared its final eminent domain hurdle and proposals are on the county’s desk. Add TTM’s $130 million plant and a 38-unit Erie Boulevard adaptive reuse, and the corridor east of Syracuse faces its biggest reset since the mall opened in 1954.
Erie Boulevard East and Jamesville Road has been a question mark since March 2020, the month ShoppingTown Mall locked its doors after 66 years of operation. On May 14, 2026, that question mark turned into a stack of paper on County Executive Ryan McMahon’s desk: redevelopment proposals for the 65-acre site, due by 3 p.m. that Wednesday, the first clean legal path the property has had in six years.
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The corridor now sits on a pipeline north of half a billion dollars: the ShoppingTown reset, a $130 million Defense chip plant in construction, a 38-unit Canal era adaptive reuse, and Micron supply chain site moves.
The 65-Acre Reset: ShoppingTown Clears Eminent Domain
The 2026 headline event is the legal unsticking of the ShoppingTown site. State Supreme Court Judge Joseph Lamendola approved OCIDA’s eminent domain request for the former Macy’s parcel on March 30, 2026, ending a two-year fight with holdout owner Benderson Development. The county had offered $2.5 million for the Macy’s parcel, the final piece of the 65-acre footprint not already under public control.
That ruling followed an earlier acquisition: the county closed a $4.5 million deal in fall 2025 to purchase the former Sears building, described by county officials as critical to assembling a developable parcel. Combined with the original mall settlement with prior owner Moonbeam Capital Investments, the county now has functional site control over a property DeWitt town board minutes call a generational opportunity.
The path was not direct. A previous deal with OHB Redev LLC, a joint venture of Hueber-Breuer Construction, DalPos Architects, Housing Visions, and Redev CNY, was terminated by the county in October 2025 after the developer could not secure the independently owned Sears and Macy’s parcels. That earlier proposal had cleared SEQR review for 912 residential units, a mix of townhouses, condos, and multi-family apartments, alongside more than 250,000 square feet of retail and entertainment space, with investment figures ranging from $300 million to $450 million.
OHB’s exit reset the clock but did not erase the entitlement work. The mixed-use overlay district DeWitt’s town board adopted for the parcel remains in force. The county issued a new RFP on March 10, 2026, asking for housing, retail, office space, and allowing warehousing and manufacturing, the last category an acknowledgment of the semiconductor supply chain pulling north toward Clay.
The county’s asking price is $25 million, with a caveat that a lower offer may be accepted “if a proposal offers strong community value.” Town Supervisor Max Ruckdeschel, who took office in January 2026 after winning the November 2025 election with 64.9 percent of the vote, has been firm in public meetings that residents do not want manufacturing on the parcel, setting up tension between the county’s expansive RFP language and the town’s narrower vision.
Project Pipeline: What Is Actually In Motion
TTM Technologies: The Quiet Anchor
While ShoppingTown takes the headlines, TTM Technologies is moving the most dirt in DeWitt. TTM is investing up to $130 million in a 215,000 square foot facility on roughly 23 acres adjacent to its existing DeWitt plant, with 100,000 square feet of that footprint reserved for future expansion. The facility will produce Ultra-High Density Interconnect printed circuit boards, primarily for U.S. military applications, and will be one of the first U.S. plants specializing in UHDI manufacturing.
The jobs picture is concrete. TTM expects to create 400 new positions and retain more than 600 existing Central New York jobs, bringing its regional workforce to 1,000. Financial backing includes a $30 million Department of Defense grant and up to $17 million in performance-based Excelsior Jobs Tax Credits from Empire State Development. Phase one capital runs through 2026.
The project signals to other defense and semiconductor firms that DeWitt has industrial acreage, water and power capacity, and a willing town board within 15 miles of the planned Micron campus in Clay, driving speculative warehouse and flex space proposals along Collamer Road and the I-481 corridor.
Erie Boulevard Corridor: Smith Building And The Adaptive Reuse Bet
Across Erie Boulevard from the ShoppingTown footprint, a different development model is setting a precedent. Paulus Development, with VIP Architectural Associates, is converting two connected buildings dating to 1890 and 1920 at the former Smith Restaurant Supply site at 3140 Erie Boulevard East into a mixed-use property delivering 38 affordable apartment units across a three-story original building and a five-story addition, plus roughly 2,500 square feet of ground-floor commercial space.
The Smith conversion matters. It preserves rare surviving Erie Canal era industrial architecture along a stretch dominated by mid-century strip retail, and its income-customized rent model sets a template for affordable housing the corridor will need to draw workers for TTM, Micron suppliers, and District East tenants.
The corridor is also receiving public investment. DeWitt’s Elevating Erie initiative calls for sidewalks on both sides of Erie Boulevard and an extension of the walkway and greenspace in the boulevard’s median, positioned as a connector to the state-funded Empire State Trail. Marketing grants of up to $250,000 and PILOT tax agreements remain on the table for qualifying projects.
DeWitt Housing Units Approved By Year
The chart tells a story DeWitt residents have lived in real time. The OHB Redev SEQR clearance for 912 District East units in 2023 represented the largest single residential entitlement in town history, and its October 2025 collapse zeroed out the approval column for the year. The May 14 RFP closure decides whether 2026 ends with a near-restoration of that 900-unit envelope or another year of holding.
The 38 units at the Smith building, while small relative to the District East envelope, will be among the few new income-customized rental units delivered in the Erie Boulevard East corridor in the entire decade, a data point town board members on both sides of the dais cite when arguing pipeline diversity matters as much as pipeline scale.
East Syracuse And The Industrial Spine
The village of East Syracuse, immediately east of DeWitt, anchors the industrial side of the corridor. Mayor Lorene Dadey oversees a village whose Brownfield Opportunity Area nomination to the New York Department of State identified multiple infill industrial parcels for reuse. Village grant rules prohibit projects that remove green space or architectural features without prior approval.
Industrial real estate listings along Collamer Road tell the demand story. A 28-acre property at 6841 Collamer Road, marketed by Cushman & Wakefield, has an additional 30 acres available for expansion and signalized I-481 access. A 22,000 square foot industrial flex facility at 6741 Old Collamer Road, with 18-foot clear heights and three exterior loading docks, is on the market for warehouse, distribution, or production use. Demand for industrial flex space has tightened sharply since the 2022 Micron announcement.
Syracuse Hancock International Airport, just north of the East Syracuse village line, brings the largest new commercial envelope of any single owner. The Syracuse Regional Airport Authority plans to develop 46 acres along Colonel Eileen Collins Boulevard into up to 14 buildings, including hotels, restaurants, and a gas station. The airport lost its only hotel in 2020 and is seeking private developers under long-term leases, pending Federal Aviation Administration approval for non-aeronautical use. A first RFP for a gas station and convenience store could yield an opening as soon as 2027.
The Micron Multiplier
None of this happens in isolation. OCIDA voted unanimously to extend Micron Technology’s sales tax exemption on building supplies from a four-year deal to a ten-year deal, locking in $1.76 billion in state and local sales tax savings on construction materials. Micron’s first Clay fabrication plant has slipped to late 2030, but supply-chain build-out is happening now, and the parts that need older industrial inventory or warehouse space are landing in East Syracuse and DeWitt.
OCIDA spent $2.1 million to acquire 105 acres adjacent to the main 1,377-acre White Pine Commerce Park near Route 31 and Caughdenoy Road. Comparable acreage along the DeWitt and East Syracuse spine is scarcer, which is why the ShoppingTown site’s flexibility, with warehousing and manufacturing permitted under the new RFP, becomes economically interesting even if residents prefer a different outcome.
What Comes Next
The 2026 calendar has several determinative dates. First, the county’s review of May 14 RFP submissions, which McMahon’s office signaled will be expedited. Second, SEQR review for any successful proposal, which took roughly 18 months for the OHB submission. Third, the Macy’s parcel valuation hearing, where the court will set a final price with the county’s $2.5 million offer as the floor.
Then there is demolition. The mall structure itself remains in place. Both the Town of DeWitt and Onondaga County must approve permits and demolition plans before the buildings come down, and no public demolition start date has been announced. The selected developer’s site plan will dictate phasing, meaning the buildings could stand another 12 to 24 months even after a deal is signed.
For East Syracuse, the next-quarter calendar centers on supply-chain absorption. Collamer Road properties, I-481 warehouse listings, and the airport’s commercial tranches are racing to convert speculative interest into signed leases before Micron’s 2030 timeline forces broader logistical decisions.
Six years after ShoppingTown’s doors closed, the corridor finally has the math to model a future: roughly $580 million in confirmed capital, approximately 950 housing units in the active pipeline, 38 units in construction at the Smith building, 23 acres of defense-grade manufacturing rising next to TTM’s plant, and a 65-acre dead mall whose new identity will be chosen, not negotiated, in the back half of 2026.
Sources
- Onondaga County Industrial Development Agency (OCIDA), Request for Proposals for ShoppingTown Mall Redevelopment, issued March 10, 2026, proposals due May 14, 2026.
- New York State Supreme Court, Eminent Domain Ruling, Judge Joseph Lamendola, March 30, 2026.
- CNY Central, “Onondaga County wins eminent domain case to buy Shoppingtown’s final hold out,” April 2026.
- WSYR 570, “Judge Clears Way For ShoppingTown Mall Redevelopment In DeWitt,” April 2, 2026.
- Spectrum Local News, “Syracuse Airport plans to develop 46 acres of nearby land,” April 23, 2026.
- Empire State Development, TTM Technologies Beam Signing Announcement, $130 million UHDI PCB facility, Town of DeWitt.
- Housing Visions Consulting Corporation, “Housing Visions part of Joint Venture to Redevelop former ShoppingTown Mall property.”
- NYSDEC Environmental Notice Bulletin, OHB Redev LLC District East SEQR filing, October 25, 2023, 3649 to 3691 Erie Boulevard East.
- Town of DeWitt, Letter from Supervisor on Shoppingtown, dewittny.gov.
- Town of DeWitt, Elevating Erie initiative, planning and zoning department.
- CenterState CEO, “TTM Technologies Celebrates Beam Signing at $130 Million Manufacturing Facility in Dewitt.”
- Paulus Development and VIP Architectural Associates, Smith Restaurant Supply Adaptive Reuse, 3140 Erie Boulevard East.
- Onondaga County Office of Economic Development, ongoved.com, OCIDA project filings.
- CNY Central, “Onondaga County extends Micron sales tax break timeline.”
- This Is CNY, “Micron effect: Onondaga County is snapping up more real estate for semiconductor suppliers,” April 2025.
- Village of East Syracuse, Brownfield Opportunity Area Nomination Report.
- Eagle Bulletin / Eagle News Online, “Democrats sweep in Town of DeWitt election,” November 12, 2025.
- Cushman & Wakefield Pyramid Brokerage Company, Industrial listings 6841 Collamer Road and 6741 Old Collamer Road, East Syracuse.
- Wikimedia Commons, Category:ShoppingTown Mall, 92 files documenting the property prior to closure.
