Highway Teardown Tour | 3. Rochester, NY

Summary

The Big Dig – Highway Teardown Tour | 3. Rochester, NY

Podcast: The Big Dig (GBH News)
Host: Ian Coss
Date: June 3, 2026
Featured Guests:

• Eric Frisch (Commissioner of Neighborhood and Business Development, City of Rochester)
• Sean Dunwoody (Hinge Neighbors, Community Organizer, Artist)
• Suzanne Mayer (Hinge Neighbors, Community Advocate)

---

Episode Overview

This episode of The Big Dig continues the Highway Teardown Tour series with a focus on Rochester, NY. Host Ian Coss explores the ambitious multi-phase project to remove Rochester’s Inner Loop—a downtown beltway highway considered by many to be both a physical and social divider. The episode dives deep into the history of the highway, the community's efforts to reconnect severed neighborhoods, and what meaningful repair might look like. Through a candid panel discussion (sampling voices from both sides of the Inner Loop and city hall), listeners gain insight into urban restoration, community engagement, and reparative development.

---

Major Discussion Points & Insights

1. Understanding the Inner Loop: History and Motivation

• Physical Context:
  • The Inner Loop is a compact, trench-style beltway encircling downtown Rochester—walkable in an afternoon (02:36).
  • The east side of the loop has already been removed and redeveloped, but the challenging north section remains (03:49).
• Why Demolish the Inner Loop?
  • Original traffic projections were wildly over-optimistic; the highway never carried the loads it was built for (~7,000–10,000 cars/day vs. highways in NYC carrying 150,000/day) (07:04, 07:29).
  • Its construction both reflected and reinforced demographic and economic segregation (18:45).
• Funding as Urban Redevelopment—Not Just Transportation:
  • City planners faced skepticism from federal agencies (“this isn’t a highway project, it’s urban beautification!”) (08:14).
  • The Obama-era TIGER grant program was vital, introducing a model where community development and infrastructure overlapped (09:48).

2. The Inner Loop East: Filling The Trench & Reconnecting Streets

• Technical Details:
  • 153,000 cubic yards of clean fill was trucked in; old asphalt was pulverized and left in place for drainage (11:35).
  • Streets that once dead-ended at the loop were physically reconnected, symbolized by an event where the mayor drove a 1964 Mustang across a newly connected street (12:30).
• Development Outcomes:
  • Six and a half acres of new land opened (13:14).
  • Over 500 units of housing built; nearly two-thirds are affordable units, challenging misconceptions of all-new development being for “rich people” (25:59).

3. The Inner Loop North: Facing a Harder Reality

• Socioeconomic Divide:
  • “On one side of the highway, townhomes can sell for over $500,000. On the other side, homes sell for just over $100,000.” (15:26)
  • The highway is both a symbol and cause of deep racial and economic segregation.
• Community Fears & Skepticism:
  • Both north and south neighborhoods originally opposed the teardown—each side worried about losing their conveniences: “how are we going to get to the airport?” “how are we going to get to the mall?” (21:03)

4. Bridging The Divide: Community Engagement and Hinge Neighbors

• Voices from Both Sides:
  • Sean Dunwoody: Describes growing up north of the Inner Loop, experiencing poverty, and “playing Frogger to make sure you don’t get hit by cars going by” (16:59).
  • Suzanne Mayer: Represents the more affluent Grove Place; acknowledges stark economic, racial differences (18:19).
• Unconventional Engagement:
  • Host events like mural painting to draw neighbors together; gather informal input before any formal planning occurs (“disrupt the process”) (21:58, 23:24).
  • “You’ve got to disrupt that process. ...so that when that [public] meeting comes, people understand. ‘No, I mean low density. No, I mean this. I mean a single lane.’” – Sean Dunwoody (24:07)
• Guerrilla Education:
  • Organizers walked residents through both neighborhoods to “see the expanse” and physically experience the divide that could be healed (28:55, 29:07).

5. Restoration vs. New Creation: Balancing History & Progress

• Seeking Reparation:
  • Mayer and a colleague researched historic city directories to track families displaced by the original highway, describing an emotional experience:
    • “We sat there in the library and cried. ...If we could feel that, that’s the kind of emotion we’d like to see coming back. ...They took our neighborhood away...” – Suzanne Mayer (32:29)
• Goal: Not Just Erasing the Divide, But Bridging It:
  • “If we can work together and view this together, we will see what a beautiful coalition of people can be and what we can do together. ...We may not agree all the time, but we can do this.” – Sean Dunwoody (34:22)

6. A New Model for Reparative Development—Home Ownership as Equity

• Affordable For-Sale Housing:
  • Hinge Neighbors is leading development of 11 affordable, for-sale homes (at 60% of Monroe County’s average median income) on the last available Inner Loop East parcel—designed to build intergenerational wealth (35:41).
  • “If you have an AMI and we’re trying to sell...in 15 years, you can sell this house at market rate...You then created this huge bump for someone who’s going in there at 60% AMI.” – Suzanne Mayer (38:32)
• Developers as Community Members:
  • Their project is notable for being led by community residents rather than outside developers—a model for national replication (40:36).
  • “This project stood out. It’s different. ...We’ve got a racial wealth gap in this community, and how are we going to address it? ...Homeownership.” – Eric Frisch (39:58)

---

Notable Quotes & Moments (with Timestamps)

• On the value of reconnecting neighborhoods:
  “Can the divisions these roads created actually be healed? ...Can the people on either side become neighbors again after decades of living with a highway between them?” – Ian Coss (01:26)

• On the highway’s underused reality:
  “Traffic volumes were about 7,000 cars a day. ...For comparison...sections of [the BQE] in New York City...carry 150,000 cars a day.” – Eric Frisch (07:29)

• On community skepticism about removal:
  “That is a terrible idea. ...How are we going to get to the airport?...the mall? ...Then we knew we had something in common.” – Suzanne Mayer and Sean Dunwoody (21:03)

• On honest community engagement:
  “You’ve got to disrupt that process. ...We put our foot out in front of each other before there was even a talk of a plan to get people worked up, to get people going...” – Sean Dunwoody (24:07)

• On housing and reparations:
  “We want to put back what was taken away.” – Sean Dunwoody (37:05) “This is a point of reparations. ...You create equity, homeownership.” – Sean Dunwoody (37:41)

• On blending historic restoration and new growth:
  “If we could feel that [loss of community], that’s the kind of emotion we’d like to see coming back. ...How do you not think about restoration or reparation or whatever the word is?” – Suzanne Mayer (32:33)

• On model-building for the nation:
  “There aren’t a lot of communities that have done what we’ve done...” – Eric Frisch (40:36)

---

Key Timestamps

• 01:26 – Introduction to the deeper question behind highway removal: Can divides be truly healed?
• 03:43–04:07 – Rochester Inner Loop East removal described; setting up themes of equity vs. convenience.
• 05:27–13:14 – Eric Frisch recounts the decades-long story behind putting highway removal on the city’s agenda, how funding and planning hurdles were overcome, and the technical logistics of the teardown and fill-in.
• 15:26–18:45 – Ian Coss frames the sharp socioeconomic disparities on either side of the Inner Loop; guests introduce themselves as representatives of these disparate communities.
• 20:51–24:35 – Hinge Neighbors narrate the challenges and creativity involved in early public engagement.
• 28:55–30:22 – The power of physically walking neighborhoods as a tool for empathy and design insight.
• 31:17–34:13 – Discussion of historical research into displaced families; emotion and call for restorative approaches.
• 35:41–38:32 – The Hinge Neighbors affordable home-ownership project is announced and explained as a “reparative prototype.”
• 39:58–41:28 – City officials praise the community model and affirm Rochester as an example for national replication.

---

Takeaways

• Highway teardown is as much about social fabric, history, and equity as about transportation.
• Engagement “guerrilla-style”—making development visceral and accessible—can rally skeptics for a shared vision.
• Repairing past damage requires not only removing the physical barrier but directly investing in restorative outcomes (affordability, ownership, diversity).
• Rochester’s multi-decade efforts now serve as a model for cities grappling with similar destructive legacies—offering hope that divided neighborhoods can not just heal, but thrive together.

---

“If we can work together and view this together, we will see what a beautiful coalition of people can be and what we can do together.”
— Sean Dunwoody (34:22)

Transcript

[Quince Brand Representative]

Summer always makes me rethink what I'm reaching for every day. Lighter fabrics, better materials, pieces that are easy to wear and look effortless. That's why I keep coming back to Quince. They focus on high quality essentials. Think breathable linen, soft organic cotton, washable silk. But without the luxury markup, everything feels elevated but still easy. Quince has beautiful everyday pieces like 100% European linen pants, dresses and tops with style starting at $32. Everything at Quince is priced 50 to 80% less than similar brands. Quince works directly with ethical factories and cuts out the middlemen. So you're paying for quality, not brand markup. And it's not just clothing. Quince has really become a destination for elevated essentials across home kitchen and bedding. And with summer travel season coming up, I decided to update my luggage with the Quince Carry on bag. It's ultra light but still sturdy. There are interior compression panels and a removable laundry bag. And the 36060 degree spinner wheels and telescopic handle will make navigating through the airport a breeze. Elevate your summer wardrobe. Go to quint.com bigdig for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada too. That's Q-U-I-N c e.com bigdig for free shipping and 365 day returns.

[Ian Coss]

Quince.com bigdig and also from the MIT Federal Credit Union mortgages designed to make your home financing journey effortless. Federally insured by NCUA equal housing lender NMLS number 699225 I think that lurking under the surface of many highway removal projects is a question that is hard to answer and therefore not always discussed. And can the divisions these roads created actually be healed? Can the scar with time fade? Can the fabric re knit? Can the people on either side become neighbors again after decades of living with a highway between them? Rochester, New York is trying to answer that question. So how long have you lived here? My whole life. Do you remember what used to be right here in front of us? Yeah.

[Suzanne Mayer]

The Inner Loop is literally where we're standing.

[Ian Coss]

So you would be on the highway. My name is Ian Coss. This is the Big Dig Highway Teardown Tour. Today we round out our trio of Empire State episodes in Rochester. The city is in the midst of a multi phase project to entirely remove what's called the Inner Loop. It's a beltway road like many cities have. But there are two details I'd emphasize for those of you who don't know Rochester. First is that this is a very tight beltway right around the core of the city. Like you could walk the whole thing in an afternoon if you really wanted to. Second is that it's not elevated. It's set down in a trench. A low grade part of this inner loop on the east side of the city is already gone. The city filled it in about a decade ago, and that's where I had that conversation you heard at the top. But in many ways, that was the easy part. Is it worth it?

[Sean Dunwoody]

Yeah, I think it's worth it as long as they leave the rest of

[Suzanne Mayer]

the Inner Loop where it is.

[Ian Coss]

Because the Inner Loop east ran mostly through a commercial district of the city. There weren't that many people living right around it. The next phase will be different. It's through a residential district. You don't want them to take the rest of the road?

[Sean Dunwoody]

No, I don't want them to take the rest of it out.

[Ian Coss]

No. So in many ways, this episode is going to be more about housing and development than it is about transportation. I wanted to bring together residents for from those divided neighborhoods, plus a city planner to talk through how this project came about and the very difficult work still ahead. The conversation was recorded with WXXI at their beautiful downtown Rochester studio, just a couple blocks from the Inner Loop itself. We're gonna take this kind of in two parts tonight. We're gonna start by looking at the past, how we got here, and then we're going to turn to what's going on right now. So for that first part, we have with us Eric Frisch, Commissioner of Neighborhood and Business Development for the city of Rochester. Give it up. So, Eric, I'm hoping you can take me back in time about 20 years. It's 2007. You've just taken a job here with the city of Rochester, and you find this idea that's up on the shelf, kind of a radical idea of removing what people here call the inner loop. What did you think?

[Sean Dunwoody]

Yeah.

[Eric Frisch]

So when I was hired at the city, it was a blessing for me to walk in to a situation where I had the opportunity as a young transportation planner, city planner, where the city had a project on the books and

[Ian Coss]

you're, like, fresh out of college not to date yourself.

[Eric Frisch]

But I had spent five years at the Genesee Transportation Council, which is the regional transportation planning body before.

[Ian Coss]

So you cut your teeth a little bit, but you were young and hungry.

[Eric Frisch]

That's right. I was ready to go.

[Ian Coss]

And so this idea is on the shelf.

[Eric Frisch]

And so the Genesis of the idea came from 1990, a document called the Vision Plan for Downtown. And the idea was to take that southeasterly section of the highway and simply bring it up to grade as a boulevard and create some land for development. So you could say that we were well ahead of our time. Right. In thinking about this that many years prior. And over the ensuing years, it became something that was featured in every planning document. It became something that was socialized enough, that became, I think, pretty widely accepted that this will happen someday.

[Ian Coss]

Yeah. So let's talk a little bit about the road itself. So the inner Loop, as the name suggests, it's a kind of a loop right around downtown. Why? Why was this possibility even A possibility? Like the idea of getting rid of this highway, turning it into more of a surface street? What is it about this road? Yeah. Yeah.

[Eric Frisch]

Well, one good question would be, why was it ever built in the first place? But this particular section of the highway, this easterly section, also never lived up to the expectations, if you can call them, that it was designed to be a highway with high traffic volumes. It never did. Right. The traffic volumes were about 7,000 cars a day. Seven to ten thousand cars a day.

[Ian Coss]

For comparison, we did another taping recently in New York City talking about the BQE sections of that road, which are not necessarily any bigger, carry 150,000 cars a day.

[Eric Frisch]

That's right. And that's what this was theoretically built to serve. Right, Right. Large volumes of traffic.

[Ian Coss]

And did they at that moment, did it seem like, well, it's just going up and up and up. Like 50 years from now, this is going to be like downtown Brooklyn?

[Eric Frisch]

Yeah. I think if you look at the population projections that were being produced at that time, it definitely called for no end in sight to population growth in this region. In fact, I believe the 1960s were the first decade that population started to decline.

[Ian Coss]

So you take this idea off the shelf, and as I understand it, one of the challenges this kind of project is that it's sort of a transportation project in that it involves a road, but it's really more of like an urban redevelopment project. And this. You know, my background is in the Big Dig in Boston. They ran into this constantly with the feds, with the Federal Highway Administration, who would say this isn't a highway project. This is an urban beautification project. What are you doing here? Yeah, how did you approach that, where you really are trying to get rid of road capacity, get rid of car capacity? How did you get funding for it?

[Eric Frisch]

Yeah, it was the same conversation here. You know, we had to secure funds from, you know, earmarks from Congress, like

[Ian Coss]

get it written into the legislation.

[Eric Frisch]

That's right. For those early phases to actually get into in depth studies and early phases of design. And as we proceeded through that design process, we were told repeatedly as a transportation project, no, it's meeting its transportation purpose. So we had to convince the state, DOT and Federal Highway Administration that this can advance as a community development project. And so it wasn't until the Obama administration came in with the TIGER program, which was a product of the stimulus era.

[Ian Coss]

Is there an acronym.

[Eric Frisch]

TIGER was Transportation Investments Generating Economic Recovery. It's burned into my memory bank. It had a nice tiger logo on it.

[Ian Coss]

It was wonderful. Yeah.

[Eric Frisch]

And. And that created a new opportunity that really hadn't existed before. Doing something different with transportation infrastructure.

[Ian Coss]

Yeah. So how did the TIGER money change the dynamic? What happens then?

[Eric Frisch]

So then we are told that we have just over a year to go from preliminary design to construction drawings and get this project out to bid because there's a very short window that the funds are eligible. So we had to, forgive me for saying, but we had to hit the gas and really get to work. And so a project that had taken 20 plus years to get to that point now a pretty complex design and engineering process had to be condensed in a pretty small window.

[Ian Coss]

And it was like, use it or lose it. If you don't hit that deadline, we

[Eric Frisch]

had to do it.

[Ian Coss]

The money is gone.

[Eric Frisch]

There was no option. So everybody agreed. We're going to get this done. I was young and full of energy.

[Ian Coss]

Did you have more hair then?

[Eric Frisch]

I had a full head of hair, yeah. Thank you. For the viewers at home can picture this.

[Ian Coss]

And is that partly to blame?

[Eric Frisch]

Yeah, yeah, I think so. But you know, that was well worth it.

[Ian Coss]

Small price to pay.

[Eric Frisch]

That's right.

[Ian Coss]

I'm trying to wrap my mind around the process of this project because it's not a tear down in the sense of, you know, you take welders into it and you just like bring down the steel structure. It's a trench that you have to fill in. So let's start with real basics, like where do you get the dirt?

[Eric Frisch]

Great question. So I believe the number when we designed it was about 153,000 cubic yards of clean fill that had to be brought in. So someday, generations from now, somebody may dig and find the footings and foundations for.

[Ian Coss]

Is there asphalt under all that fill still?

[Eric Frisch]

It had to all be rubbleized. Right. For draining.

[Ian Coss]

Okay. So that the water could get through it.

[Eric Frisch]

That's Right.

[Ian Coss]

But you didn't remove it. You just, like, pulverized and left it there.

[Eric Frisch]

That's right.

[Ian Coss]

There were streets that previously just would, like, dead end at the inner loop and were ultimately reconnected. Somebody told me that the mayor drove across in a 1964 Mustang, which was the year, you know, of the last time that some of those streets were connected. Were you there that day?

[Eric Frisch]

Yeah, I was. I was. It was a.

[Ian Coss]

You're not in the back of the Mustang.

[Eric Frisch]

I wanted to be. That would have taken away, I think, from the.

[Ian Coss]

You were in the Toyota, two cars back in the motorcade.

[Eric Frisch]

I was on my bike.

[Ian Coss]

You're on your bike.

[Sean Dunwoody]

There you go.

[Eric Frisch]

Yeah, yeah. No, that was a great event. They drove on Charlotte street. When that was reconnected for the first time in what, 60, nearly 50 years.

[Ian Coss]

So going back to our kind of mental timeline, 1990, first proposed, 2007, sitting on the shelf, 2000 and tens. It gets funding. 2018, it's finally completed. Did you feel like the work was done?

[Eric Frisch]

Of course not, no. Well, for two reasons, right. We created six and a half acres of land that meant that land had to be developed. So there was an entire process related to the infill development of that land, which continues today. And then there was a whole lot more inner loop left to go. Here we are today.

[Ian Coss]

Coming up, Rochester gets that chance to do more, but this time, the process will be much more delicate. Support for the big dig comes from the Cape Playhouse in Dennis Village, now playing Nat Zagre's Mozart to Pop Chart, a theatrical concert exploring and exploding musical traditions. Tickets for Mozart to pop [e-mail] and also from the Maine Maritime Museum, offering oyster tasting cruises throughout the summer. Visitors can learn about aquaculture from Maine's oyster farmers and freshly shucked oysters. Maine maritime museum.org before we jump back into the conversation, I want to offer a couple details to emphasize the challenge of this next phase of the project. So remember, the inner Loop east is done. It's mostly redeveloped. What used to be a highway is now basically a row of big apartment buildings. The Inner Loop north, the next segment of the road the city wants to fill in, will need to look different. The challenge here is that the road divides two very different neighborhoods. On one side of the highway, townhomes can sell for over $500,000. On the other side, homes sell for just over $100,000. $500,000 versus 100,000. That divide is the product of a lot of history and many discriminatory policies. But the highway has become the physical symbol of it. So what happens once the highway is gone? Can those neighborhoods truly be reconnected? And what can Rochester build to help make that happen? What's so amazing about Rochester and this story is that you did the Inner Loop east, this project we've been talking about. But now you have this opportunity to keep going, to learn from what you did and do more. And it seems like that's a rare thing, you know, with the Big Dig. We did it. It was done. There are a lot of things I think people wish they could do differently, and that moment has passed. So to talk about this next phase of the project, we have with us Sean Dunwoody and Susan Mayer, who are two board members of the group Hinge Neighbors. So welcome, Sean and Suzanne. So I was excited to talk with you both tonight because you two live on opposite sides of the Inner Loop in two very different neighborhoods, and you've come together around this issue. So I'm hoping that each of you can start by just describing your neighborhood, the place where you live. And, Sean, maybe we could start with you.

[Sean Dunwoody]

All right, we'll start with me. I live north of the Inner Loop. I actually grew up six streets, 1, 2, 3, 4, 7 streets from where the Inner Loop is, and used to throw rocks at cars from there. When you cross it or you play Frogger to make sure you don't get hit from the cars going by, you

[Ian Coss]

would, like, run across it.

[Sean Dunwoody]

Yeah, yeah, you gotta make sure. It's like the Frogger game, which you make sure. No, not physically, but, you know, the bridge is okay. I ain't trying to kill myself. And so living north of. Of the Inner Loop, it's a different dynamic. It's a poorer neighborhood. Doesn't look like. For those listening, you can't see. I don't. You probably can tell I'm a black dude, but, okay, so I'm a black guy. Suzanne's a white lady. So we look like what our neighborhoods. Pretty much what our neighborhoods look like. We try to represent that. And so there is some differences in education, there's some different. In economics, there's racial differences. So when we got together, we always stand on the principle that we look like who we are, we look like our neighborhoods, and we look how and who we want to represent in this move forward in Interloop North. You know, we're the ebony and ivory of this project.

[Suzanne Mayer]

As you can tell, I'm an old white woman. She's nice enough not to say that, but we have. It's a More wealthy neighborhood. A lot of people who've come in from retiring want to have a place to be able to walk. It's a walkable neighborhood. It has access to all sorts of things like the theater. Everything you want is there, and that's what we are.

[Ian Coss]

Yeah. So I took a walk through your neighborhoods today. I was walking with somebody from the city historian's department because Rochester has a city historian, which is wonderful. And she was pointing out that, you know, if you go back far enough, I mean, these neighborhoods were not so different. Like, there was a big mix of, you know, immigrants, and there was a convent here and different kinds of shops here and there, and that the inner loop was built in this mid century time period at the same moment when the demographics of the city were really changing, when you had this great migration from the south, the African American population was swelling. And so in some ways, that segregation between the black neighborhoods and the wider neighborhoods on either side of this highway kind of came about at the same time that this, you know, it's not necessarily a direct product, but the highway was sort of part of creating this divide. I'm curious for you, living there. I mean, were there people around who remembered it before the inner loop? Do you hear those stories? Yeah, there's still people there.

[Sean Dunwoody]

I have to shout out Martin Pedraza, he lives two streets away from the inner loop. Starts on Sile Street. Yes. He remembers delivering papers when the roads were connected and when they were digging it out, he'd jump in the big puddles of water when it would rain and fill in inside the inner Loop. So, yes, there are people that are still there that understand that know that their ward was destroyed, which affected their community. And they saw the shift in their community as it began, as the migration happened, as resources were pulled away from the community, as people left the commercial corridors, he saw the sort of demise of how the neighborhood was left.

[Ian Coss]

So as you start going out in your respective neighborhoods and talking to people about this idea of removing that barrier between them, what was the response?

[Suzanne Mayer]

Well, it's gonna be pretty funny. We actually went to a neighborhood meeting and we said, the inner loop is

[Ian Coss]

coming, meaning the inner loop removal is coming.

[Suzanne Mayer]

Thank you very much.

[Ian Coss]

The inner loop is going, going away.

[Suzanne Mayer]

And so we went to my neighborhood associations, a very strong neighborhood association, and they said, that is a terrible idea.

[Sean Dunwoody]

Awful, awful.

[Suzanne Mayer]

Why? Well, because. How are we going to get to the airport? We can get to the airport in seven minutes. It's a great place to live. So then we went to Market View Heights which is the neighborhood association on the north of the interloop. And they said, that's a terrible idea, some of them. And they said, well, why? Well, how are we going to get to the mall? Then we knew we had something in common.

[Sean Dunwoody]

Okay, we know this. That makes sense. But, you know, this is going to get filled. And you have the opportunity to help shape the future of your neighborhood and those who are to come. And I think it would behoove you if you spoke about what you want to see in the Senate, Little Phil. And that's how we got folks together.

[Suzanne Mayer]

That wasn't always easy. One of the things about Sean is a muralist. He has outstanding murals all around town. And also because Sean loves Rochester, he said, we have to give something in order to get something. So we're gonna go draw, get this mural going. So we got permission from everybody, and we encourage the neighbors to talk to us about, is this going to be a good idea? Well, this is what we want.

[Ian Coss]

Did you put up the mural that day?

[Sean Dunwoody]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It was all just smoke and mirrors is what. Basically, she's saying it was just a trick to get people out because people are like, hey, what are those kids doing? What are those adults doing? And why is it so bright and colorful? And I get to sign my name on there? So it's all these things, and people are like, what is this about? All the time we're asking them the questions, hey, do you know the interlude's coming? No, they're getting rid of that. Yeah, they're getting rid of it.

[Suzanne Mayer]

What?

[Sean Dunwoody]

I don't know. What would you like to see? Housing, some stores? I'd like to have a business. So all these things came into play, and it was all part of our part and parcel package of bringing two communities together who had not actually spoken to each other. So between that moat, we have Market, View, Heights, and we have Grove Place Association. And our goal was to bring them together to create this plan. And that's what we were able to do.

[Ian Coss]

There's something powerful there. And, you know, the typical process is you have a meeting, you know, a public comment period, and you lay out schematics and you take questions like, that's sort of the model of public engagement.

[Sean Dunwoody]

Oh, we were taught. We were taught something different. One of our original board members, who was very familiar with Interloop projects as well, he said, there's three ways of getting engagement and three ways you're going to get something done. There's the process, there's the plan, and there's implementation. He said, most people, when they're having meetings, they pretty much got a plan. He said, you've got to disrupt that process. And so that's what we did. We put our foot out in front of each other before there was even a talk of a plan to get people worked up, to get people going, to get people thinking. So that when that comes that point of that community meeting, people understand. No, I mean low density. No, I mean this. I mean a single lane. I know.

[Ian Coss]

I mean, so they have the vocabulary.

[Sean Dunwoody]

Yes. They know.

[Ian Coss]

They know what At Grade Boulevard means.

[Suzanne Mayer]

They did really have a better vocabulary for that time. Yes. And it was a messy process. And Eric was very kind to us in many ways. Like, we were in his face all the time. And when you bring us in, we're messy. We're not. You bring messiness to a project through having that kind of. It's almost like guerrilla education.

[Sean Dunwoody]

Yeah.

[Ian Coss]

So I took a walk this morning, as I mentioned, along the inner loop north and then down along the inner loop east, the part that's done. And it is this sort of long row of big block apartment buildings. And I stopped in one of those buildings. There were some seniors having coffee and muffins around a table. And I managed. The door was locked. You couldn't just go in. But somebody came out for a cigarette. And I was like, hey, could I come in and talk to you guys? So they let me in and come and talk for a bit.

[Sean Dunwoody]

And.

[Ian Coss]

And the overwhelming sentiment I heard from them was just gratitude that they had housing there. I talked to one woman who said, I never thought I would be able to live downtown in Rochester, and here I am. She said, they treat us like kings and queens here.

[Eric Frisch]

That's great.

[Ian Coss]

The other sentiment I heard was skepticism about, like, should we really be doing more of this? Like, do we trust the city and state to get this right on the north side? Do we actually want more of these big apartment buildings? Do you feel like the first round, did it build the goodwill and trust that you were hoping, or are you encountering a lot of that skepticism when you go out in the community now?

[Eric Frisch]

Whatever is built, right, if we're really talking about reconnecting neighborhoods and. And recreating neighborhoods, those neighborhoods have to be reflective of what's around it. So context matters. So, you know, if you were to look at. At the planning products that we've put out so far for Interloop north, we've heard loud and clear we want. They want lower density housing mix. Right. So we're looking at singles and doubles and townhomes, smaller scale in other parts. As the, as the highway moves westerly and becomes more of that downtown context, then we can look at building larger buildings that better mirror what's around them in that area. I will note that Interloop east, if you go there, you're going to look at those buildings a lot. There's a popular misconception. You look at those buildings, you say, oh, these are all for rich people. These are all high end apartments and they're not right. Built over 500 units of housing on the land in that area so far. And nearly two thirds of the of the units that were delivered are regulated, affordable units. And you've got coffee shops and other things that have opened up in the corridor and in the area. It's created a neighborhood. That's the goal and we hope that we can deliver that and working with our partners to make sure that what does come on the 20 plus acres of land that we're creating with Interloop north is what best serves the community for the long term.

[Ian Coss]

Yeah, the scale of land, you know, I'd seen it on a map, but walking it today and seeing just how far it is, you know, from standing on one side, Suzanne, like, you know, in your neighborhood and looking across, it's like several blocks of distance. You know, when you include all the, you know, retaining walls and the ramps and the lanes and the median and everything, there's a lot of space there.

[Sean Dunwoody]

And so we said, okay, when it's filled in, as Eric was just mentioning, you've got shops, you've got people who are living there of different incomes and realities. So you're going to add a seven minute lifestyle commute. Now you're going to stop at a coffee shop, you can go to the laundromat. I might go buy a book at the new bookstore, which is way better than just you just zipping past things. There were some anecdotal stories of business owners when they did Interloop east that once it came up to grade and you had to send traffic down, union people discovered, oh, there's a brewery here, oh, there's a flower shop. And so some of those folks saw an increase in business because you got to remember they were just driving underneath it and never saw what was happening above ground. They're just like tunneling rats, you know. And so now this is what adds to lifestyle that you can, you're going to make some stops, you'll make some breaks and find something new that you might not have discovered. And I think that's the beauty of a city. Find something new that you might not have discovered in your daily travels.

[Ian Coss]

And is that part of your outreach process is to show people what is already there on the other side of the moat that will soon be a seven minute walk away?

[Sean Dunwoody]

No, it is part. What we do is part of our travels is we take people through the whole process and we walk the whole loop as you did. We go north, we go east, we walk.

[Ian Coss]

Is it eye opening for some people? Like, have they ever walked there?

[Sean Dunwoody]

Because they see the expanse and then we're like, all right, we were standing over there. Now you see, we're over here and we actually show people as they're walking, we show them what the housing. You can actually see some of the housing stock that was still there. You have homes that are still there from 1888, and you can see some of those same homes on the other side of the inner loop. And imagine what was that, what the community was like. So you have homes like on Lyndhurst street where, you know, there were no. There's no driveways. There was no such thing as a drive. They didn't have cars. And then we take them on the other side of Interloop north and you can see these same streets where there's no driveways because there were those things. You still got the Hitching Post. So it's just giving people that idea of what community was there and what it feels like and bringing people who

[Suzanne Mayer]

never would never have an opportunity to be together to talk about the future and what was it going to feel like? Being united again?

[Sean Dunwoody]

Yeah, I think, Sorry, you've got to take. You got to take. We just talk about these walks. You got to take people with walks. There was a racial inequity committee that was put together for Interloop North. And so we're all there. Everybody's, you know, got their ideas how we're going to do it, how are we going to structure it? I said, dang, have any of you even walked in the neighborhood?

[Suzanne Mayer]

No, not one.

[Sean Dunwoody]

Maybe you should go and walk before you try and figure out some metrics of race and equality. And you don't even know what you're talking about. And it was very eye opening for that team. We actually had a person with us who was in a wheelchair as well. And she took us on the route that she would have to cross by the train station. And it takes us about a minute and a half. She says, it takes me 15 minutes. I have to take all these Opposite routes because I can't get across the street fast enough. And so those kind of design considerations were put forth when they looked at land planning.

[Ian Coss]

There's sort of a higher level question I'm curious to hear maybe from several of you on. It's just how you think about restoration of what was there versus just creating something new. Are you looking at historic pictures and of what was there? Does that spark your imagination?

[Suzanne Mayer]

Yeah, I think. But I think also we have to be realistic that there is going to be probably more density and the point

[Ian Coss]

was than there was before.

[Suzanne Mayer]

Than there was before. But there were a lot of. As a side note, we were asked to say who was living in the inner loop at the time and when it was destroyed. And in the same committee, we didn't know the answer. So another person on the committee and I decided we would go to the city directories and see who was living there and what happened. It was a very emotional time for people I didn't even know or have any. It was really unbelievable. We started out in 1959 and we took those and we saw people who lived there. The next time that street was gone, and those are the houses. And we tried to make a database of who lived there. And you could see people moving to the east. And it was at the end, two old white women looking at this and going. We sat there in the library and cried. It was really devastating. It was really. To watch that in a database, just

[Ian Coss]

looking at names, just looking at names, you don't have faces, you don't have stories.

[Suzanne Mayer]

It was unbelievable, emotional. And if we could feel that, that's the kind of emotion we'd like to see coming back. If you hear people would say, they took our neighborhood away, they took our schools away, then they took our downtown away. How do you not think about restoration or reparation or whatever the word is? It becomes four letter words in some people's vocabulary. This is really about how do you really live the dream of Rochester. Rochester is the home of Frederick Douglass. I mean, amazing, man. We have to set this example for the rest of the nation. And when Sean and I are asked to talk everywhere, I'm sure Eric feels the same way. Rochester is an example and we don't even know it.

[Ian Coss]

Do you think it's possible to, I don't want to say erase the divide, but to meaningfully bridge the divide between your two neighborhoods?

[Suzanne Mayer]

I do. That's how we are.

[Eric Frisch]

Yeah.

[Suzanne Mayer]

I never walked in that neighborhood. I mean, I wasn't really. I walked in the neighborhood and Now, I walk a lot in the neighborhood that is on the north side. I would walk with people, and they say, are you feeling safe here? Yeah, I do. People. I mean, the neighborhood. If you talk to people in the neighborhood, the neighborhood loves their neighborhood. So I do. I have to be an optimist. That is our job locally, is to prove to the world that this can be different, that we in Rochester can do something different and make it happen.

[Sean Dunwoody]

No, no, no. Just like you were saying, we talk about this all the time. You've got to have a multicultural approach.

[Ian Coss]

Yeah.

[Sean Dunwoody]

You've got to view it that way. I mean, things happen when you have different from people. Lifestyles, incomes, ideas, belief systems. They work together to accomplish things. I mean, that's what the abolitionists did. That's the suffrage movement was about. That's how things get accomplished. But if we always approach it as, oh, no, these whites have got to build their neighborhood over here. These Latinos got to build their neighborhood over here. These blacks have to build their neighborhood over here. No, if we can work together and view this together, we will see what a beautiful coalition of people can be and what we can do together. I think this is why we try to exemplify that. We try to show, no, we can do this. Let's figure it out. We may not agree all the time, but we can do this.

[Suzanne Mayer]

We can try it. Well, we're trying to do a prototype now, but we'll let you introduce.

[Ian Coss]

No, I want to ask about this. That is a perfect segue, because part of the reason I wanted to gather together this exact group of people is that you are all involved with a very concrete project right now. In fact, you all came to this taping directly from a city council meeting talking about this. So maybe Sean and Suzanne, could you set that up? What is it that you are working on right now?

[Sean Dunwoody]

Okay, we'll see. Okay, we'll go there. So for these past eight years and, you know, walking communities, walking neighborhoods, discussing things with folks, the one thing that resonated when people wanted to see filled in, once that inner loop's filled, they want homes. They want home ownership. Home ownership, home ownership. We don't want apartments like on Interloop East. We want homes. Bring our community back. Bring us back to the grid. And so that's always been on the back of our minds, and it's always been on the back of our board's minds that one day we would love to develop some affordable housing. But then one day, one day, this fantastic architect of CGS called us Up. He's been working with us and playing with ideas on the north. He said, hey, there's this RFP for one of the last parcels on Interloop east and I think you folks should develop it. We said, whoa, slow down here. We don't know about that. But we stuck to it. As Suzanne says, if no one else is going to do it, who else? And so we worked with fantastic Craig Jensen and we are looking to develop 11 for sale affordable units on one of the last parcels on Inner Loop east, which will bring back homeownership that Suzanne told you about that. She cried looking at the list of people who were removed from the neighborhood. So we want to put back what was taken away.

[Suzanne Mayer]

But when we went to find funding, people laughed at us really loud and said, you're going to have to get an outside foundation to come in and do this with you. So we sort of said, okay, we'll start doing that right now. And we did. We kept looking outside and we still write grants and things like that for that, but we'll go forward with it. So we have been playing with it. We got, we, we submitted a proposal and there were other proposals and we were, lo and behold, we were accepted. And then now what do we do?

[Sean Dunwoody]

What do we do now? We got to figure it out. But this makes it. The benefit of this is it's at 60% of the average median income from Monroe County. So this makes it a great way to, as we try to put it, put things back, or as Suzanne always says, the four letter word. This is a point of reparations. You really want to figure out how you do something. You create equity homeownership. So if we can get this done, we can replicate this in the Inner Loop north philanthropy. And so this is why we're really excited about this project and really want to push this forward and get the communities engaged.

[Suzanne Mayer]

And it's multiculturalism because you're putting in. Normally we think about affordable housing, we end up putting it in a poor neighborhood. What we want to do is have poor people come into an area that

[Sean Dunwoody]

has market rate hikes right across the street from it.

[Suzanne Mayer]

Think of this. If you have an AMI and we're trying to sell, it'll be average income. Sorry, median.

[Ian Coss]

Average median income for the neighborhood, 60%.

[Suzanne Mayer]

And in 15 years, you can sell this house at market rate. So talk about what generational wealth is that. You could buy the house for 200,000, theoretically. Then in 15 years, they are. Many houses in the area are being sold for 500 600,000. You then created this huge bump for someone who's going in there at 60% AMI. That doesn't mean they're always going to be there, but it's an example of what could be done, of what it could do if we think about this for the future. And I'm not going to be around, but that's going to be.

[Sean Dunwoody]

Yeah, you will.

[Ian Coss]

Yeah, you will.

[Sean Dunwoody]

That's how you jump. That's how you jump start the generational wealth. That's how you jump start it. Because some people had a chance to do it before other people could.

[Ian Coss]

Right.

[Sean Dunwoody]

So this is an opportunity to actually jumpstart that initiative, to be like, all right, all right. Some people had, you know, 50, 60, 80, 120 years ahead of you to get this going. You can start now.

[Ian Coss]

Yeah. Eric, what'd you think when these two community organizers showed up and said, we want to be developers?

[Sean Dunwoody]

He laughed.

[Eric Frisch]

Well, you know, the first go around of some of the conversations, we got a lot of interest. Right. There's a lot of interest in development in the city right now, and that's good, that's healthy. But this project stood out. It's different. It's the right project on so many levels for what we're trying to achieve. Right. We've got a racial wealth gap in this community, and how are we going to address it? Well, what is the foundation of household wealth? Homeownership.

[Ian Coss]

Do you see what you're doing as a model for the nation?

[Eric Frisch]

Of course, of course. Both working with my friends over here, and I hope that we can get through that process with them and be at a groundbreaking in the not too distant future. But of course, with what we're doing with. With Inner Loop in general. Right. Let's not forget we've done something spectacular here. It's rare. There aren't a lot of communities that have done what we've done. We've hosted so many communities from across the country. We've hosted or participated in meetings with communities from literally across the world. People want to see this. This is unique. This is different. And we did it here in Rochester. Let's do more of it. Let's show the world what we can do.

[Ian Coss]

Two weeks after that taping, the Rochester City Council formally approved Sean and Suzanne's development proposal for the last remaining parcel of Inner Loop East. The removal of the Inner Loop north is planned to begin in 2028. Next up on the highway teardown tour, we head west to a place that knows a thing or two about highways. It's Austin Texas, where the city and the state are currently locked in a feud over what to do with their downtown highway and crucially, who is going to pay for it. Thanks again to our partners at WXXI, Todd McCammon, Denise Young, Veronica Volk, Kristen Tutino, and especially Brian Sharp. Brian has covered the Inner loop project for 20 years now and he helped me to select our panelists. He also joined us on stage that night, but just for time purposes. We cut that segment of the show but truly could not have done it without without you Brian. Thank you. Special support for this episode also came from the Neil Pierce Foundation. As always, if you want to support the show, just go into whatever podcast app you are listening in right now and leave us a review. I know it seems like this annoying refrain you hear from podcasters all the time, but truly, if everyone listening right now left us a quick review, it would make a huge difference for the future of this show. The Highway Teardown Tour is produced by Fiona Boyd and myself, Ian Coss, with support from Isabel Hibbert. Our editor is Lacey Roberts. The Executive producer is Devin Maverick Robbins. The artwork is by Bill Miller. The Big Dig is a production of GBH News and distributed by prx. See you in Austin. I really hope you're enjoying the show and before I let you go, I just want to drop in with that constant podcaster's reminder to please rate the show, leave us a review, subscribe, and of course tell a friend. All that stuff really, really does help us keep the show going. Thank you so much

[Suzanne Mayer]

from prx.