The contractor paved the second lift the length of the job during the week of July 6, and crews are now grading lawns to meet the new sidewalks. The state says the rebuilt Second Street corridor will be finished by fall.
The second layer of asphalt went down on Second Street in Liverpool during the week of July 6. For Mayor Stacy Finney and the roughly 2,600 people who live in the square mile around the paving crews, that fresh blacktop marks the moment the $13.8 million rebuild of Route 370 stopped tearing the village apart and started putting it back together.
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The update came straight from village hall at 310 Sycamore St. “The contractor will be paving the second layer of asphalt the length of the job,” the village posted in its official Route 370 project update covering the week of July 6, relaying the schedule from the New York State Department of Transportation. “Lawns will be graded to blend with the sidewalks. Please slow down in the work zone and be alert to the workers.”
The finish line has a season attached to it. NYSDOT has said since May 23, 2025, when it put the $13.8 million price on the project, that the work would be complete by fall of 2026. The agency repeated that commitment on May 5 of this year, telling WSYR that the job would be done by fall. Two months later, with the second lift of pavement down along the full length of the corridor, that target is still standing.
What $13.8 million buys on one mile of road
This is not a repave. It is a full depth reconstruction, paid for with federal money, that removes the old road down to its base and builds a new one. The project limits run about one mile: excavation began at the western end near the entrance to Liverpool Elementary School and extends east to where Second Street meets Oswego and Cypress streets. Route 370 wears local street names as it passes through the village, running as Second Street and meeting Oswego Street near the eastern end of the job.
The state’s scope goes well past the driving surface. The project includes reconstruction of curb ramps that did not meet Americans with Disabilities Act standards, replacement of sections of sidewalk, and crosswalk signal enhancements at village intersections. Tulip Street and Vine Street, the side streets between Second Street and Oswego Street, get resurfaced as part of the same contract. The drainage system beneath the road is being replaced too, a detail NYSDOT flagged when it first presented the project in 2023 and one that WSYR confirmed was part of the active work this spring.
NYSDOT designed the rebuild to last. When the agency introduced the project, it said the new roadway was engineered to maintain its integrity for 50 years. It also made two commitments to the people who would live through the construction: two way traffic would be maintained during peak hours, and at least one sidewalk would stay open at all times for pedestrians. The department assigned professional engineer Paul Lo Gallo as project manager.
Finney has backed the project from the start. “The Village of Liverpool is very pleased that there will be the extensive repairs done to 370 that are so long overdue,” she said when the state announced the funding in May 2025. A year later, with excavators in the ground, she was blunter about the cost of living through it, asking residents this spring to avoid the construction area for the summer while crews did the heaviest work.
The job crosses a municipal line, and the announcement reflected that. NYSDOT’s project description names the Town of Salina alongside the Village of Liverpool, and both of the area’s state lawmakers made a point of naming the two communities together in their statements. Regional newsrooms picked the story up within days of the funding announcement; CNY Central reported the $13.8 million figure and the fall 2026 target on May 26, 2025. For a village that measures a single square mile, a state project with a price near $14 million is a once in a generation piece of public works.
Three years from public meeting to blacktop
Liverpool has been waiting on this road for a long time. NYSDOT formally announced the reconstruction on October 16, 2023, and invited the public to a meeting nine days later, on October 25, 2023, from 6 to 8 p.m. in the Liverpool Middle School cafeteria at 720 Seventh Street. The pitch that night covered the same elements now visible on the ground: new pavement structure, new drainage, new curb ramps, new signals.
The dollar figure arrived on May 23, 2025, when NYSDOT announced $13.8 million in federal funds for the Route 370 work as part of a nearly $40 million pair of Central New York projects. The announcement drew statements from most of the area’s elected lineup. State Senator Christopher Ryan called the investments in Salina and Liverpool “a game-changer for families, commuters, and local businesses.” Assemblymember Pamela Hunter said, “This investment in Route 370 is a win for the residents of Salina and Liverpool.” U.S. Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer credited the federal infrastructure law he championed, saying the money was “paving the way for a safer future in Central New York.”
NYSDOT Commissioner Marie Therese Dominguez used the announcement to make a broader point about where state money goes. “When we think of infrastructure projects, highways and bridges are often what comes to mind, but infrastructure encompasses roadways of all kinds,” she said.
By this spring, patience in the village was thinner than the press releases. WSYR’s Your Stories desk fielded viewer questions in early May asking when the construction would finally wrap, and the station described the job as a complete overhaul of the one mile stretch from Liverpool Elementary east to Oswego Street. The station also reported what every villager already knew: the project exists because of years of complaints about potholes and uneven pavement on Second Street.
A village of 2,600 that 35,000 people drive through
The disruption math in Liverpool is lopsided in a way few places match. The village covers roughly one square mile on the north shore of Onondaga Lake and is home to about 2,600 residents, according to the Greater Liverpool Chamber of Commerce. The same chamber profile counts more than 35,000 people traveling through the village every day. That is more than 13 pass-through travelers for every resident, funneled largely along the very corridor now under construction.
The village is also a school hub out of proportion to its size. Three of the Liverpool Central School District’s 13 schools sit inside village limits, per the chamber, and the western end of the project zone starts at the entrance to Liverpool Elementary itself. The timing of the heaviest roadwork through summer, when school is out, is the schedule working as intended.
Village life has kept moving around the cones. The 2026 Liverpool Is The Place concert series is running Monday and Wednesday nights at 7 p.m. through the summer, with a weather cancellation line at 315-457-3895. Village taxes came due July 1 without penalty, payable at the clerk’s office on Sycamore Street from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. And the village has already posted its 2025 independent financial review from the Bonadio Group for any resident who wants to check the books. Liverpool even maintains a standing Pedestrian Safety Committee, which will inherit a corridor with new sidewalks, compliant ramps, and upgraded crosswalk signals when NYSDOT hands the street back.
The construction bulletin itself has become a fixture of village communication. Village hall posts NYSDOT’s work schedule on its homepage under a standing Route 370 project heading and points residents to the state DOT’s Facebook page for construction updates between postings. The July 6 bulletin ran three sentences. For anyone who lives on Second Street, walks a kid to Liverpool Elementary, or waits at the Oswego Street light, those are the three sentences that matter most this month.
The other half of the $40 million package
The Route 370 job shares its funding announcement, and its deadline, with a second Central New York project 20 miles west. NYSDOT is spending $24 million in combined federal and state money to replace the State Route 34 bridge over the Erie Canal and Seneca River in the Cayuga County towns of Brutus and Cato. The existing five span bridge dates to 1963 and carries more than 3,000 vehicles a day. Its replacement is a three span steel girder structure with a realigned approach, full depth pavement replacement, an added eight foot shoulder for pedestrians and bicyclists, and navigation lights for boat traffic below.
Both projects carry the same completion target: fall 2026. If the schedules hold, Central New York closes out the construction season with a rebuilt village main street in Onondaga County and a new canal crossing in Cayuga County, nearly $40 million of federal and state work finished in the same window.
What to watch between now and fall
The near term work is the quiet kind. With the second asphalt lift down along the whole corridor, the state’s posted schedule for July has crews grading lawns so yards meet the new sidewalks cleanly, and the village is still asking drivers to slow down and watch for workers in the zone. NYSDOT Region 3 fields project questions at 315-428-4351.
NYSDOT has not published a day certain for completion, only the season. But the character of the work has changed in a way residents can see from the curb. The tasks in the July bulletin, second layer paving and lawn grading, are finish work, a long way from the excavation that opened the western end of the corridor near the elementary school. And the standing commitments the state made at the 2023 public meeting, two way traffic at peak hours and at least one open sidewalk, remain in force until the job closes out.
The calendar gives the village two natural checkpoints. The annual willow basket workshop with weaver Bonnie Gale comes to the village on August 8. Then on September 13, Liverpool hosts its third annual Porch Fest, the music festival that puts residents on their porches and crowds on their sidewalks. Last year those crowds walked a torn up construction zone. This year, if NYSDOT’s fall 2026 target holds, they will be among the first to use a street that the state says was built to last 50 years.
Sources and verification appear below. CNY Signal verified every figure in this story against the New York State Department of Transportation’s project announcements and the Village of Liverpool’s official project updates on July 15, 2026.
Sources & Verification
Village of Liverpool, official website, Rte. 370 NYS DOT Project Update for the week of July 6, 2026, and village announcements, accessed July 15, 2026, https://villageofliverpoolny.gov/
New York State Department of Transportation, Region 3 press release announcing $13.8 million Route 370 project and $24 million Route 34 bridge project, May 23, 2025, https://www.dot.ny.gov/news/press-releases/2025/2025-05-23
New York State Department of Transportation, Region 3 press release announcing Route 370 reconstruction and October 25, 2023 public meeting, October 16, 2023, https://www.dot.ny.gov/news/press-releases/2023/2023-10-161
WSYR (Your Stories Q&A), “When will construction on Route 370 in Liverpool be finished?”, May 5, 2026, republished via Yahoo News, https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/stories-q-construction-route-370-170442828.html
CNY Central, “Two major roadways will undergo major reconstruction, announced by NYS D.O.T.”, May 26, 2025, https://cnycentral.com/newsletter-daily/two-major-roadways-will-undergo-major-reconstruction-announced-by-nys-dot
Greater Liverpool Chamber of Commerce, Community Information, accessed July 15, 2026, https://liverpoolchamber.com/community-information/
Reporter: Matt Keenan. Edited by: the CNY Signal news team. Published: July 15, 2026.
