Ithaca Commons

Place of local interest in New York State

The Ithaca Commons is a two block pedestrian mall in the business improvement district known as Downtown Ithaca that serves as the city's cultural and economic center. The Commons is a popular regional destination, and is filled with upscale restaurants and shops, public art, and frequent community festivals.

The Commons is shaped like an inverted T. It consists of a two block segment of State Street between Cayuga and Aurora Streets lined with shops, galleries, restaurants, and bars, and a smaller one block segment, "Bank Alley," extending north up Tioga Street to Seneca Street, that is home to several banks and financial institutions. Many of the buildings are mixed use, with apartments or offices on the upper floors. Tompkins Cortland Community College has a small satellite campus on the Commons. During the summer, local musicians and other entertainers put on free concerts and performances, including at the Bernie Milton Pavilion named after local musician Bernie Milton. The Commons is also used for many political protests, rallies, and speeches. The Commons hosts several festivals throughout the year, including Ithaca's main annual festival, the Ithaca Festival in early June. A scale model of the Solar System, the Sagan Planet Walk, begins in the Commons. The Planet Walk is named after famed Cornell University astronomer Carl Sagan, and stretches 3/4 mile from to the Sciencenter. The inner ring planets all fit on a short section of Bank Alley. The two main hubs of Tompkins Consolidated Area Transit (TCAT)'s bus network are located adjacent to the Commons.

By the 1960s, the rise of car culture, suburbs, and urban renewal had severely hurt downtown Ithaca. Many storefronts were empty, and many historic buildings had been torn down and replaced with vacant lots. In 1971, newly elected Mayor Ed Conley, "pulling on a 1950s era suggestion from a Cornell city planning student", proposed converting several blocks of State Street into a pedestrian mall. At the time, many small towns in the United States were experimenting with using pedestrian malls to revive downtowns. Formal design began in 1972, under the direction of local architect Anton J. Egner. Construction began in 1974, and the Commons opened in 1975. It cost $1.13 million Another luxury apartment building, Gateway Commons, was completed nearby in 2007. But the Commons' aging infrastructure started to cause problems. In the late 1990s, an ad hoc city committee formed to discuss the future of the Commons. Their report, "Renewing the Design of the Ithaca Commons: The Report of The Commons Design Review Committee," was released in April 1999, and led to a $127,000 capital project. The project consisted largely of maintenance work, although it also paid for the removal of a large, brutalist fountain that had been turned off for years due to leaky plumbing. The fountain was replaced with a large, open paved area with seating. More temporary repairs were made to the Commons in 2008. In 2009, the city commissioned landscape architecture firm Sasaki Associates to do a complete redesign, with a more open central lane, "patterned pavement, varied and movable seating, improved performance spaces, energy efficient lighting, an outdoor reading area and a small playground." The old Commons was demolished in April 2013. The reconstruction was originally planned to take 18 months and cost $9.5 million. But a series of problems, including a poorly documented existing conditions, poorly drawn plans, poor coordination with NYSEG, and mayhem caused by a runaway truck, caused the project to go long over schedule and budget. Many business owners reported dramatically decreased sales and foot traffic. In August 2015, the Commons re opened, at a total cost of $15 million. In 2012, a stainless steel and bronze sculpture of Martin Luther King Jr. was unveiled at the western end of the Commons. The sculpture, by Rob Licht, depicts a portrait bust of King with an abstracted image of a waterfall. The project was expected to be completed in summer 2019, but was still under construction in August 2020, when the developer sued the city in an effort to stop another project in the area, concerned that they would lose revenue due to competition for parking. In 2022, a building that once housed Firebrand Books a building on the Commons, at 143 East State Street was designated a local historic landmark by the Ithaca Common Council.