More than 500 attend 40 Below Summit
Syracuse Post-Standard
Greg Munno and Laura Brandon
October 19th, 2008
Participants at annual event celebrate Syracuse, learn about each other.
At Syracuse University's Hendricks Chapel, more than 550 young adults heard stories about building lives full of community, meaning and passion in Central New York.
At Syracuse Stage, they took in a play, and provided questions for a congressional debate.
At the Gear Factory, they heard from young entrepreneurs making a go of it in Syracuse and learned how to live, work, shop and play locally and sustainably.
Everywhere they went Saturday for the fourth annual 40 Below Summit, 40 Belowers heard from each other, celebrating a city they see entering a new age of prosperity and vitality, in part because they themselves have decided to stick around and help make it happen.
"It's rare to see so many people from my age group together, connecting," said Steve Ball, 25, of Syracuse, who was attending his first summit. "It's a great way to feel part of something, part of a larger community."
Saturday's summit featured a kind of "choose your own adventure" of activities that highlighted Syracuse's assets, from its people to its history. Here's a taste of what took place.
It's all good
To open the day, 40 Below Chairman Dominic Robinson pointed to the many reasons he thinks there is a "burgeoning renaissance taking place in Syracuse - buildings are being built, public art is popping up everywhere, people are getting involved in their neighborhoods and making them stronger."
Robinson acknowledged Syracuse has pockets of blight and swaths of underdeveloped land. But he saw this as much as an advantage as a disadvantage. "The story of this community has not yet been written, and it is ours to write," he said.
We can make 'us' here
"What I love about Syracuse is that it has been a place where I could reinvent myself, where I found a community that embraced me," said Sharif Bey, a small-business owner who moved to Syracuse from New York City and who participated on the panel at Hendricks Chapel. "Now I have a little piece of Syracuse I can call my own."
A little help from D.C.
At the congressional debate, Scott Willis, of WAER-FM (88.3), asked 25th District candidates Howie Hawkins, Dan Maffei and Dale Sweetland what they would do to attract and retain young talent.
"First, we have to do something about property taxes," Sweetland said. "We lose a lot of people and a lot of business because of the taxes."
"We have to get the economy moving," Hawkins said. "To do that, I propose a massive, $300 billion investment in green technology."
"Keeping young people in the area is absolutely the most important thing to our future," Maffei said. He called for a green-technology research triangle between Rochester, Ithaca and Syracuse; forgiving student loans for people who stay; and developing the downtown core.
Greg Munno can be reached at gmunno@syracuse.com or 470-6084.
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