The elevated stretch of Interstate 81 that has carried traffic over downtown Syracuse since the late 1960s is entering its final full year of service. The New York State Department of Transportation says the 1.4-mile viaduct will close to through traffic by late 2026, and sections of the southern end could start coming down before the year is out. When that happens, the roughly 100,000 vehicles that move through the corridor each day will be permanently rerouted, with through traffic shifting to what is now Interstate 481 and local traffic dispersing onto a rebuilt street grid.

That moment will be the most visible milestone yet in the $2.25 billion I-81 Viaduct Project, the largest public works undertaking in Central New York’s history and one of the most closely watched highway removals in the country. The state has awarded five Phase 1 construction contracts worth a combined total of more than $1 billion, three of those contracts are finished, and in early July the department awarded Contract 6, the $2.1 billion Phase 2 design-build package that project director Betsy Parmley called the biggest contract in the department’s history.

What follows is where every piece of the project stands as of July 2026: the money, the phases, the highway redesignation, the fate of the viaduct itself, and the neighborhood whose destruction in the 1960s set the moral terms of the whole debate.

How Syracuse got here: 2008 to the 2022 Record of Decision

The decision history matters because it took nearly a generation. NYSDOT launched its I-81 Corridor Study in 2008, followed by the joint I-81 Challenge study with the Syracuse Metropolitan Transportation Council, which concluded in 2013. The pivotal document arrived on April 19, 2019, when the department released its Draft Design Report and Draft Environmental Impact Statement, naming the Community Grid as the preferred alternative over rebuilding a taller, wider viaduct. Department analysis found the grid option required acquiring 4 buildings, against 24 buildings for a full viaduct reconstruction, and a 2017 state study had already identified the grid as the least expensive path.

Litigation, a pandemic, and a supplemental environmental review stretched the process further. The Final Environmental Impact Statement landed in April 2022, and on May 31, 2022, Governor Kathy Hochul and Senator Chuck Schumer announced that the Federal Highway Administration had signed the Record of Decision, the legal green light that ended 16 years of studies, hearings, and fights. Construction on Phase 1 began in the spring of 2023.

The money: five contracts awarded, three finished, and now the giant

NYSDOT split the $2.25 billion program into two phases and eight planned contracts. Phase 1, which focused on preparing the rest of the highway network to absorb the viaduct’s traffic, produced five awards:

Contract 1, a $296.4 million design-build package, went to Salt City Constructors LLC, a joint venture of Lancaster Development and Tully Construction Co., to build the northern interchange of the future Business Loop 81 and reconstruct I-81 between Kirkville Road and the Thruway. Contract 2, covering the southern interchange, went to CNY Alliance, a team of Rifenburg Companies, A. Servidone/B. Anthony Construction, and Economy Paving Company. Contract 3, at $218.9 million, returned to Salt City Constructors for new ramps to North Clinton Street and bridge reconstruction at Bear, Court, and Spencer Streets. Contract 4, at $313.5 million, went to CNY Alliance for a new I-690 interchange at Crouse Avenue and street work reconnecting the Eastside and University Hill. Contracts 1, 2, and 3 were finished by fall 2025, according to reporting by WRVO.

The fifth and final Phase 1 contract, worth nearly $251 million, was awarded to Salt City Constructors on April 22, 2025. It converts I-81 from north of Colvin Street to Burt Street into Business Loop 81, builds a roundabout at Business Loop 81 and Van Buren Street, replaces a railroad bridge, and adds noise barriers and stormwater upgrades. Roughly seven spans of the viaduct will be removed under this contract, and the governor’s office said the viaduct will close south of Harrison Street once the contract is about two-thirds complete.

That leaves Contract 6, the centerpiece of Phase 2. NYSDOT ran its design-build procurement through 2025, holding a draft request-for-proposals information meeting on August 27, 2025, and in early July 2026 awarded the contract to CNY Alliance for $2.1 billion, the largest construction contract in the department’s history. In January, project director Betsy Parmley told WRVO: “This is the biggest contract, I think, in the history of DOT.” WRVO reported the package was valued at over $900 million at the time; the final award came in at more than double that estimate. Its scope includes a new West Street interchange, rebuilt connections between I-81 and I-690, and removal of the viaduct’s northern end. NYSDOT’s Phase 2 plans also call for reconstructing I-690 through the downtown corridor and replacing aging water and sewer lines beneath Erie Boulevard and Salina Street.

What actually happens to the viaduct

Under the Record of Decision, the elevated highway is demolished between the New York, Susquehanna and Western Railway bridge on the south end and the I-81/I-690 interchange on the north. In its place, traffic moves to a ground-level street network anchored by a rebuilt Almond Street corridor, with new sidewalks, shared-use paths, landscaping, decorative lighting, and rebuilt bridges knitting together blocks the highway has walled off for six decades.

The sequencing runs south to north. Under Contract 5, the viaduct closes south of Harrison Street first, with about seven spans removed. By late 2026, per NYSDOT’s public timeline, the full viaduct closes to through traffic, and demolition of southern sections could begin before the end of the year. The northern portions come down under Contract 6. Nothing about the structure is preserved: unlike some highway-removal projects that repurpose deck sections as parks, Syracuse’s viaduct is being removed entirely.

The name game: I-481 becomes I-81, and downtown gets Business Loop 81

When the viaduct closes, the interstate designation moves. The 15.04-mile eastern bypass currently signed as Interstate 481, running through DeWitt and Cicero between its two interchanges with I-81, will be redesignated as mainline I-81. Through trucks and travelers headed between Binghamton and Watertown will follow the new I-81 around the city rather than over it.

The old alignment through downtown does not disappear from the map. The former I-81 segment between interchanges 16A and 29 becomes Business Loop 81, a lower-speed surface route that feeds the street grid. Phase 1’s northern and southern interchange contracts existed largely to make that switch possible: widening and hardening the bypass corridor so it could legally and physically carry interstate through traffic, and building the interchanges where Business Loop 81 will peel off. NYSDOT has said the redesignation takes effect with the viaduct closure, which puts the sign changeover on track for late 2026.

The debt to East Adams Street

Every official document about this project eventually arrives at the same three blocks of history. In 1950, roughly 90 percent of Syracuse’s Black residents lived in the 15th Ward, the neighborhood centered on East Adams Street between downtown and University Hill. The city applied for federal interstate funding in 1958, and through the 1960s the elevated highway and parallel urban renewal projects razed the ward. More than 1,300 families were displaced, according to the New York Civil Liberties Union, which documented how residents pushed back against the “slum” label city officials attached to a functioning, close-knit neighborhood of Black-owned homes and businesses.

Displaced families, boxed in by housing discrimination, largely resettled just south of the new viaduct, in the shadow of the structure that had taken their neighborhood. That geography is why the Community Grid decision carried weight far beyond traffic engineering, and why federal and state officials framed the 2022 Record of Decision and the 2023 groundbreaking as an act of repair. Contract 4’s street reconstruction on the Eastside, in the former 15th Ward, was announced in exactly those terms by the governor’s office.

Jobs: a 15 percent local-hire target with national attention

The state has attached one of the country’s most aggressive local hiring programs to the project. Under the Local Hire Initiative, at least 15 percent of work hours on each construction contract are set aside for workers living in City of Syracuse zip codes or on Onondaga Nation Territory. As of September 2024, 136 workers had been onboarded through the initiative, and NYSDOT said the program was on pace to meet or exceed the 15 percent goal. The state Department of Labor backed the pipeline with a $4.5 million grant that funds an I-81 Workforce Advisor at CNY Works and staffing at NYSDOT’s community outreach centers, alongside the WorkSmartNY Syracuse Build Collaborative, which includes the Urban Jobs Task Force, Pathways to Apprenticeship, CenterState CEO, and the building trades council.

In December 2024, the Transportation Research Board recognized the initiative’s outreach work with a national award in its state DOT video competition. The governor’s office has repeatedly described the project as supporting thousands of union construction jobs over its life, though NYSDOT has not published a single audited total of jobs created to date. That number is worth pressing for as Phase 2 ramps up: Contract 6 alone will be the largest employer on the project.

The clock: what “done” means and when

NYSDOT’s original planning documents estimated six years of construction for the Community Grid. With Phase 1 having started in spring 2023, WRVO reported in January that the project is expected to reach completion in 2029, which makes 2026 roughly the halfway point. The near-term sequence is the one to watch: Contract 6 mobilization, then the Erie Boulevard and Salina Street utility work, then the late-2026 viaduct closure and redesignation, then demolition and grid construction running through the back half of the decade.

The honest caveat: megaproject schedules slip. The DEIS itself arrived years later than first promised, and the Record of Decision came three years after the DEIS. The dates above are the state’s current projections as of July 2026, and CNY Signal will re-verify them at each contract milestone.

Where to track this

NYSDOT maintains the authoritative project hub at webapps.dot.ny.gov/i-81-viaduct-project, including a contracts page, a travel advisories page updated as closures begin, and the project library holding the full DEIS, FEIS, and Record of Decision. The department says it will push Phase 2 closure and detour updates through its social media channels and a project smartphone app. The City of Syracuse posts its companion Community Grid Vision Plan at syr.gov. For lane-level, real-time conditions, use 511NY. CNY Signal’s own rolling coverage, including our Phase 2 detour guide, is updated as NYSDOT confirms each closure window.