Enfield Board urges widened siting search for Center of Government
by Robert Lynch; July 12, 2025
Tompkins County Legislator Randy Brown, a man experienced in real estate and banking, has an opinion about governmental construction: “I don’t like building buildings when there’s empty buildings,” Brown told the Enfield Town Board this week.
Legislator Brown points out Tompkins County currently has empty office space. And there’s a lot of additional space available near the airport; most notably at the expansive, 17-building Cornell Business Park, recently foreclosed upon by a local bank.
And because of that availability, the Enfield Town Board July 9th—with Brown seated in the room’s visitor’s gallery—urged Tompkins County to look at the Business Park and at other possible locations as an alternative to building a brand-new, $50 Million, 48,000-square foot Center of Government in the shadow of DeWitt Park in Downtown Ithaca.
“I’m not expert enough, my pay grade isn’t high enough, to tell the County what to do on this,” Enfield Councilperson Robert Lynch—this writer and the author of last Wednesday’s resolution—told Town Board colleagues that night. “But it’s just: let’s stop; let’s look at this; let’s look at these other options and see if maybe one of them is a better fit for us. I don’t know.”
Enfield’s recommendation to Tompkins County came less than a week after Tompkins Community Bank officially closed on its acquisition of the 17-building office park complex. And it did so at a bargain price approaching that of a fire sale.
Foreclosing on a mortgage lien of $75,454,000, Tompkins Bank bought the modern, low-slung properties for an even $50 Million, according to documents filed July third with the Tompkins County Clerk. The buildings, each built on land leased from Cornell University, had been held by a string of limited liability companies and other legal entities controlled by noted local developer Philip Proujansky.
County Clerk’s records show that the sale was completed on June 25th, with attorney Carl J. DePalma serving as the Referee. New York State and Tompkins County gained a whopping $300,000 in transfer taxes by the sale.
As officially known now, the 17, land-leased, bank-owned properties are owned by “Ithaca Tech Park LLC.”
Quoting DePalma, The Ithaca Voice July 11 reported that at the foreclosure auction, first scheduled for April 29, “the bank set the opening bid at $50 million and while other bidder pools were present, the bank ultimately won the auction.” DePalma declined to provide The Voice further details.
The Tompkins County Legislature, by a nine-to-four vote June third, made its firmest commitment yet toward building a Downtown Center of Government. Legislators resolved to approve “funding of up to $50 Million—through a combination of cash, debt and potential grant sources—for development of the Center of Government project to be located on the 300 block of North Tioga Street,” its resolution stated.
Both at that June Legislature meeting and at times thereafter, officials have differed as to how firm of a commitment the Legislature actually made when it adopted its resolution But Randy Brown was among the legislative quartet who dissented on the vote. And since the June resolution’s adoption, he’s become an increasingly outspoken critic of the downtown undertaking, that despite the fact that he chairs a special committee that would oversee a Center of Government’s construction.
“Our employees are important. But I think constituents are more important,” Brown told the Enfield Board this past Wednesday, “because they pay the bill.”
Only after Tompkins County had hosted a series of five “Community Engagement” meetings around the county in June—one of them June 12 in Enfield—sessions to explain the downtown project and take input, did information surface that County officials had conferred with the foreclosing financier, Tompkins Community Bank, about possible County purchase of one or more of the Cornell Business Park structures.
In a May 19th memorandum to legislators and key staff, County Administrator Korsah Akumfi had advised that the then-pending foreclosure had “prompted renewed discussion about potential alternatives to the downtown center.”
In what he described as an effort to seek “clear direction from the Legislature to ensure focused progress” on what he termed the “long-standing priority” of a consolidated office building, Akumfi in a three-page memo outlined the relative advantages and drawbacks of the airport-area office park location versus keeping with earlier plans to build downtown. On point after point, the administrator concluded that building downtown was better.
One Enfield Town Board member July 9th pointed to that conclusion.
“In this review, they obviously thought about it and they concluded in this memo that it didn’t make sense,” Enfield Councilperson Jude Lemke critiqued the Business Park option after having reviewed what Akumfi had written.
Legislator Brown’s opinion when asked for a reply: “I think the memo was quickly written to shut it down.”
Brown concluded that the County Administrator had drafted his memo with a purpose in mind; with intent to tip the scales in downtown’s favor, a position preferred by the Legislature’s majority.
“I think it’s because seven of these people, these legislators (most of them long-serving incumbents set to depart the Legislature at year’s end), they’ve been doing this for eight years, and they’ve had enough,” Brown concluded. “This is the third property they’ve looked at.”
When the Center of Government concept regained momentum in 2018, legislators first considered a site on the 400 block of North Tioga Street, a partially-vacant lot bounded by residences and a block away from the County Courthouse.
The Legislature bought that initial land—it still owns most of it—but later moved its collective attention away from it and saw commercial properties in Tioga’s 300 block as a better place for the building. That, too, Tompkins County purchased. And current plans call for deconstructing three mid-20th Century buildings on this latter location to make way for the Center of Government. Officials plan to break ground in early 2027.
Although some Enfield Town Board members expressed initial hesitancy on meeting night, the resolution “in support of expanded siting options for a Tompkins County Center of Government” passed unanimously.
“Resolved, that the Enfield Town Board hereby encourages the Tompkins County Legislature and Tompkins County Administration to consider seriously and thoughtfully various alternative siting locations for a Tompkins County Center of Government, alternatives including, but not necessarily limited to, buildings made available at the Cornell Business Park….” Enfield’s July 9th resolution states.
“I’m not sure myself whether they’re right for Tompkins County,” this Councilperson said of the business park buildings. “I don’t think that anybody right now knows if they would be a good, alternative fit for Tompkins County. But I personally believe they should be considered, and I didn’t know what other board members thought about that. ”
Opinions varied.
Supervisor Stephanie Redmond, somewhat reluctantly, gave the resolution her support. She’d attended the June engagement meeting in Enfield.
“There are a lot of benefits to not being downtown,” Redmond acknowledged. But “there are also understandable reasons why they want to have it all together for their own efficiency of their offices and their employees,” she added.
Initially during the Enfield Community Engagement meeting, Supervisor Redmond had strongly supported locating Center of Government offices in vacant one-time stores at the Shops at Ithaca Mall. But as the engagement session progressed, Redmond’s enthusiasm waned. Tompkins County representatives, including architects and engineers, steered the Supervisor toward keeping and consolidating Courthouse-reliant departments, including the District Attorney, downtown.
“From what I gathered at the meeting… it was a little of a ‘domino effect,’” Redmond said July 9th, “where you need to have the court where it is, you had to have the DA where the court is, and you need to have another office where the DA is, and then you need to have their office near a different office, because they all interact so much. That’s why they have this whole thing with the Center of Government being right at that spot downtown,” the Supervisor concluded.
Redmond’s—and many County officials’—logic holds value, yet only to a point.
True, the District Attorney and the County Clerk face state orders to vacate the Courthouse to give judicial staff more room. But there’s “The Old Jail” next door, and it could house the DA. And one of the current buildings slated for deconstruction—perhaps “Building C,” where the Board of Elections now resides— could accommodate the County Clerk.
That row of tumbling dominoes could, indeed, be interrupted, providing, of course, that those in charge have the will to halt the tumble. The County Administrator, the Finance Office, and Assessment could easily relocate uphill. And as Randy Brown has said, the Office for the Aging has no business being in the downtown building. The office’s visitors are older, and downtown parking is hard to find.
Councilperson Cassandra Hinkle, nonetheless, wondered whether an out-of-the-way rural location could actually impede elder access.
“The biggest problem with elderly is lack of transportation,” Hinkle commented, “to take them to their appointments, and that’s a huge problem.”
But unless a county office remains within true 70-something walking distance, providing the older adult remains ambulatory, riding a TCAT or Gadabout bus to a business park or a mall-based location should become as handy as taking that same bus to downtown.
“There may be disadvantages there,” this Councilperson, Lynch, acknowledged regarding the Business Park option, “but I don’t like the idea that it’s just being arbitrarily dismissed and tossed off the table, just like I don’t like the idea that the Shops at Ithaca Mall is being tossed off the table.”
Enfield’s resolution urging a deepened look at Center of Government site selection next goes to the County Administrator and to each elected legislator. Randy Brown was handed his copy after Wednesday’s meeting. Again stated, Brown would prefer we use what’s already been built.
“Environmentally, it’s not a good thing, in my mind,” Brown said of starting fresh with a new, four-story downtown behemoth, “not to mention it costs $50 Million.”
It’s “worth looking at,” Supervisor Redmond said of what Ithaca Tech Park LLC has for sale.
“We need to broaden our perspectives,” this Councilperson concurred.
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