37. THE MAYOR’S SWEEP

THE NEXT DAY, it was still raining. Mayor Palmieri—5’ 11”, with salt-and-pepper hair—strode down Bleecker Street, holding a big pair of red pruning clippers. He cut off a low-hanging branch of a tree. Then another. Wearing a dark suit and tie, he signaled a guy in the truck following him to pick up the branches.

His team fanned out behind him: a mix of police officers, firefighters, city engineers, and the heads of various community organizations. Every Wednesday for the past eight years—except during the harsh winter months—he and his team have swept through a different part of the city: run-down blocks of Mohawk Street or a coming-to-life stretch of Genesee.

It is a chance for the mayor to connect, kibitz, troubleshoot—and also campaign for a third term. In 2017, the Utica Common Council passed a local law to extend term limits to 12 consecutive years. A Democrat, the mayor was facing a primary challenge in three weeks from Joe Marino, a city councilman representing East Utica.

“It’s the mayor’s favorite part of the job,” said Marques Phillips, formerly Mayor Palmieri’s chief of staff, about the weekly sweep; he is currently Utica codes commissioner and director of city initiatives.

The mayor wanted to give people without access a chance to meet and build a relationship with somebody in city government, he added. “Then if you have a problem, you can figure out who to call.”

Not breaking stride, the mayor, 68, cast a homeowner’s critical eye on the condition of sidewalks and storefronts. Raising five kids in East Utica, where he still lives with his wife, there was a routine, he said: “Saturday mornings, the kids didn’t sleep in. It was breakfast then yard chores.”

For 30 years, before becoming mayor, he was a salesman in the carpet and roofing industries, traveling throughout the Northeast. He also represented East Utica on the Common Council and served as deputy public safety commissioner and codes commissioner.

Despite the rain, the mayor’s team was cheerful; many have known each other for decades. A firefighter ran out of the Bleecker Street firehouse and quickly hugged Lonnie Jenkins, a tall man who is the recreation director for the City of Utica Youth Bureau. As he walked, Mr. Jenkins, a seven-year veteran of these walks, stoically picked up pieces of litter with a grabber and put them in his bucket.

A thin Black man, all in red—baseball cap, sweatshirt, and sneakers—approached.

“Mayor, I got an eviction notice,” he said, explaining he had recently been laid off. “I have a new job starting Monday. But I’m short $440 for rent.”

“Do you get Social Security?” the mayor asked.

“I’m only getting $650 a month. What can a man my age do?”

“Who is your landlord?”

“His name is Will. But my real landlord is in Washington, DC.”

Jimmy Dongsavanh, a young police officer who is a member of the department’s community outreach team, interrupted: “Call 211, they’ll give you a list of different social service agencies.”

“Will they give me money?”

“Nobody will give you money,” the mayor said, firmly. “But the eviction process doesn’t happen so fast. Go to the judge and show them proof you got a job.”

“Walk with me,” the mayor added, “because I got to walk.” He picked up twigs and fallen branches as the man fell into step with him. “Now, what are you going to do?” he reminded him. “I’m going to tell the judge I have a job.”

After the man left, Mr. Dongsavanh turned to the mayor, and teased him. “If you’d given him the $440, that would have been cut short.”

Crossing the street, the mayor and young police officer entered a large Vietnamese grocery store and greeted the store’s owner, a thin middle-aged woman with a dark bun. Mr. Dongsavanh, who is Vietnamese-Laotian—the first Asian on the police force—chatted with her as the mayor wandered around, looking at the open barrels of fresh melons and dried shrimp.

“Jimmy’s known the owner a long time,” the mayor said. “She’s the mother of his friend.” The mayor, who relishes Utica’s diversity, added, “Jimmy’s fiancée is Italian-Lebanese.”

The mayor passed Florentine Pastry Shop, an almost 100-year-old Italian bakery, then a few empty, desolate-looking storefronts. For decades, Bleecker Street has been struggling to make a comeback.

A well-dressed man in his thirties stopped him.

“Mayor, if you would do this one thing for the Muslim community, we would be so grateful.”

“What is it?”

“No school on Eid,” the man said, referring to the holiday, which had just ended. “If you could push it as a school holiday. New York City has it. Buffalo too. Syracuse—they’re voting for it.”

“I visited the Kemble Street mosque during Ramadan,” the mayor put in.

“But what about making Eid a holiday?”

“I’ll look into it at the Conference of Mayors.”

Continuing down the street, the mayor said, “The guy owns real estate—convenience stores and housing. Very successful.”

The mayor passed Caruso’s Pastry Shoppe: Behind the counter, the owner, Carmela Caruso—who has spent a big chunk of the last 50 years in that spot—chatted with a customer.

An overwhelming smell of fried food wafted from a new storefront.

Mimi Anderson, 28—along with her husband—had recently opened a fried chicken joint. It was just a counter, with orange Formica tables and chairs. Though it was 1 p.m., the place was empty.

But generally, they have been busy, Ms. Anderson said: “We already need a second fryer, but it costs $5,000. We’ll have to wait.” The mayor asked what she thought about Utica.

“The rent is great,” she said, “especially compared to where I’m from, Cypress Hills, Brooklyn. There’s no traffic. Nobody’s in a rush.”

Her family’s here to stay, she added: She and her husband have a three-month-old daughter. Her husband owned a construction company in Brooklyn and is trying to get a contracting license in Utica.

“New apartment, new baby, new business,” the mayor said.

And yet, a year later—like many small businesses trying to get a foothold—the fried chicken joint was gone.

The bearded owner of a bodega across the street signaled him: “Come see!” Entering, the mayor looked around the narrow, fluorescent-lit store. The last time he visited he had admonished the owner about how dirty it was.

“Very nice. Much better!” the mayor said.

It started raining harder. The mayor, who refuses to use an umbrella, stood on the corner. One of the men in his entourage—tall and broad shouldered—pointed to two houses across the street, next to a church. They were in good shape and freshly painted.

“A guy I know bought that house,” he said, pointing to the one on the left, “fixed it up himself, and made it into apartments. But he wanted something for himself, so he bought the other one.”

The two men stood in the rain, surveying the houses.

“Smart,” the mayor said.

An hour later, the mayor was back in his office, his white shirt dry. Around him were large renderings of the next stage of Utica’s development: the downtown hospital, now projected to cost $548 million, and Harbor Point Project, a plan to develop more than 100 acres of property around the city’s historic harbor between the Mohawk River and the Erie Canal.

“I’m the salesman,” Mayor Palmieri said, smiling.

In recent years, the mayor has matched almost a dozen abandoned buildings with developers. They have been converted into loft apartments, offices, a grocery store, and a restaurant.

Two new hotels have opened on North Genesee, and two old ones have been given new life: The downtown Radisson Hotel was bought by Marriott and underwent an expensive renovation. And the Hotel Utica was gracefully restored under the Hilton flagship.

New retail stores have appeared, including the outdoor gear store Bass Pro Shops, part of a national chain, and Stewart’s convenience stores.

Many people feel downtown is the favored child.

“Do I want to complain about progress—no!” said Samantha Colosimo-Testa, a teacher and former city councilwoman from North Utica. “But there are other areas in the city needing attention.”

Some residents would like to see more money spent on quality-of-life issues: fixing deteriorated building facades, cracked sidewalks and roads, and run-down local parks, and funding policing programs to help underserved neighborhoods deal with gun violence.

Ms. Colosimo-Testa would like City Hall to appoint a coordinator to help the refugees adapt. “And to show them what the city has to offer—bike trails in Proctor Park, the Utica Zoo, and the museum,” she said, referring to the Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute, the city’s fine arts museum.

“They need to know there’s things to do besides staying in the house. It’s their community, too.”

Utica’s population is again dwindling, according to recent reports. Between 2014 and 2018, the city lost approximately 1,300 residents.

The pipeline of refugees has been cut to a trickle: In 2020 the city was expecting only about 100 new refugees, according to Shelly Callahan, though there was an expected secondary migration of at least 100 refugees from other cities.

“We’re right on the cusp, just holding steady,” Ms. Callahan said about Utica’s population. It has led to a workforce shortage at companies like Keymark, International Wire, and Turning Stone, which have relied on refugees’ labor.

Other Rust Belt cities—in upstate New York and across the country—are also again experiencing population decline. The United States planned to admit no more than 18,000 refugees in the fiscal year 2020, down from a maximum of 30,000 in the one that ended September 30, 2019, according to the Pew Research Center. This will be the lowest number of refugees resettled since 1980, when Congress started the program.

“You have all these communities competing for refugees,” Ms. Callahan said. “States are thinking, ‘How can we attract population?’ ”

Refugees helped boost southeastern Michigan—which includes Detroit—contributing up to $295 million to the local economy in 2016 and creating between 1,800 and 2,300 jobs, according to a 2017 study by the nonprofit Global Detroit and the University of Michigan’s School of Public Policy.

But the region’s recovery is fragile: Roughly 70 refugees arrived in 2018, in contrast to the 21,000 refugees—mostly from Iraq—resettled over the previous decade. The automotive industry and construction companies are struggling to find workers.

Yet Mayor Palmieri says he is not worried about population decline.

Small drops in the census do not mean much, he explained: “Many people are afraid to be counted.” Kids, opening the door, “often say their elders aren’t there.”

Another reason he is not concerned: “Once President Trump is out of office, the numbers of refugees will go up.”

Utica is not utopia, but it has welcomed refugees, he said, “because we’re based on immigration. The immigrants, who came 100 years ago, worked extremely hard to be accepted.”

He knows this firsthand: One of his grandfathers arrived from Sicily; the other from Calabria. As a kid, he saw that Italian immigrants were looked down on: “They were viewed as uneducated,” he said. In elementary school, he was called names: guinea, greaseball.

“Even in my work as a salesman, innuendos were made. ‘You meatball guys.’ Occasionally, I’ll still hear the rumblings of it.”

The mayor has a new reason to feel upbeat: “Cree is coming,” he said.

Almost three years before, the $2 billion Marcy Nanocenter plan had fallen apart. But recently Cree, a semiconductor company based in North Carolina, announced it was going to build a $1 billion factory to make silicon carbide wafers in Marcy. Governor Cuomo’s office pledged that New York State would provide a $500 million grant.

This would mean a big boost for Utica, though the number of new jobs has not yet been announced. The facility is supposed to be completed in 2022.

Mayor Palmieri feels there is no going back: “Utica will be the best little city in America.”

He envisions it as a vibrant mix of native Uticans, refugees, retirees, entrepreneurs, and artists moving from downstate, young professionals, families, the staff of the new Downtown Hospital, techies who work at Cree, and visitors.

Many in Utica’s Black community do not feel included in this vision.

African Americans have had a longtime presence in the city: Many arrived as itinerant farmworkers—picking green beans—during the Great Migration, then decided to settle in Utica. They were marginalized from the start.

They rarely got jobs in the mills and factories. They knew to avoid certain parts of the city—like Genesee Street, near the elegant Kanatenah Apartments.

Even now, there are few African Americans in leadership roles within the city’s institutions.

“What hardworking Black people have noticed in Utica is that historically they didn’t get the niceties and access,” said Patrick Johnson, who serves as a liaison between law enforcement and the community. His family was one of the first Black families to move into Cornhill, a middle-class immigrant neighborhood, before the city’s decline.

It is now predominately working class and poor. Black people and refugees are neighbors.

Many African Americans feel the refugees have been given opportunities—and support—not available to them.

“The hand of welcome is not offered to the Black community,” said Freddie Hamilton, an activist and former councilwoman, who moved to Cornhill from Brooklyn about 10 years ago.

This is due to the country’s troubled past, she added: “Black–white relations are tough because of our history of slavery, Jim Crow, and institutionalized racism. These are much harder issues to deal with than welcoming new people to America.”

The refugees arrive with a different worldview: “They start fresh. They view America as opportunity. They have more hope.”

For the mayor, the new hospital is at the heart of the city’s reblooming. But he is also excited about the Nexus Center, a $44 million sports center, which will be adjacent to the Adirondack Bank Center, home of the Comets. The project—to be paid for by New York State and Oneida County—is designed to have ice hockey rinks that can be changed into turf fields for lacrosse and soccer.

For decades, politicians have talked about developing Utica’s neglected harbor, which includes two decayed historic buildings by the waterfront. The mayor wants to turn it into a hub where people can live and work—and also stroll, eat, listen to music, and shop.

City Hall has created renderings of residential and retail spaces; an amphitheater; and public plazas with fountains, period lighting, and native plants.

The city and state have taken initial steps: The state provided $6 million to improve the entrance to the harbor and to reconstruct the concrete bulkhead. The city has improved the roads leading to two areas of the harbor, hoping to attract private investors.

Always optimistic, the mayor said he expects “shovels in the ground in 2021.”

The next day, I walked down Hotel Street—past a couple of abandoned 19th-century brick houses—heading toward the harbor. Water Street was ahead, and beyond that a long field before the narrow brown ribbon of the Mohawk River.

A bit farther, across the railroad tracks, is the land designated for Harbor Point.

A man was standing in the field, holding a huge, handmade kite, like those I had seen downtown.

Wearing a baseball cap with black pom-poms over his ears, he signaled to me: “Come!”

I made my way toward him, crossing traffic: His kite had a purple and blue butterfly painted on it. And there was another kite—with pastel-colored fish—attached to a makeshift stage.

“Everybody calls me Kevin the Kite Man,” he said. A small Black man with a weathered face, he has been making kites for 15 years.

His real name is Kevin Hines. Born in Philadelphia, raised in Brooklyn and Harlem, he arrived in Utica a couple of years ago and is staying with a relative at a housing project downtown.

He is an ambassador of kites: “I’ve put them on the roof of Madison Square Garden. I’ve brought them to the UN. I put them around Utica. I’m trying to show people to aim high.”

“It gives you a feeling of freedom,” he said about flying kites. “Independence. You’ve got to do it by yourself.” He has taught kids, pregnant women, and people in wheelchairs.

He is comfortable in Utica; residents chat with him as he places his kites in odd spots. He got a young couple to fly kites in the snow.

The city has given him ideas: At night, he attaches lights to his kites. He wants to paint a mural on multiple kites—and fly them together.

“We got to have a city-wide competition.”

He has his own technique: “Let me show you.”

He placed the string of his butterfly kite in my right hand. “That’s your anchor.” He put the ball of string in my other hand.

It was a sunny day, with some wind coming off the water. “You don’t let out a lot of string, just keep tapping up,” he said, showing me how to let go of a little string at a time. He made a soft sound—“puh, puh, puh.”

I was surprised: The kite rose easily—like a butterfly above the field.

“If it sinks, just lift your hand,” he cautioned me. “Just let the wind do the work.”