Enfield weighs Tompkins’ leaders pitch for a Center of Government
Reporting and Analysis by Robert Lynch; June 16, 2025
Turnout wasn’t great. County legislators and staff outnumbered attendees. And as many as half of those who did accept the open invitation were local municipal leaders. One woman brought her toddler.
At the Enfield Community Center Thursday, June 12, Tompkins County convened the second of its five, first-round “Community Engagement” sessions to describe and gauge public support for a $50 Million proposed Center of Government, the four-story office building Tompkins County wants to build in Downtown Ithaca, overshadowing DeWitt Park..
That said, perhaps the most telling question asked—and then answered—came not at Thursday’s engagement session, but rather one night earlier. That’s when Randy Brown, one of Enfield’s two county representatives and chair of the committee that oversees the project, got tossed a question at the Enfield Town Board’s meeting concerning a purported commitment given the pricey building by the County Legislature eight days earlier:
“Do you see the decision made last week as basically irreversible; that we’re going ahead with the building regardless?” this writer/Town Councilperson, Robert Lynch, asked Brown during his legislative update.
“No,” Randy Brown replied quietly, yet firmly.
“That’s reassuring to hear,” this Councilperson responded. The Center of Government’s cost, its placement, and fiscal worthiness has given this Town Board member jitters since the day it was conceived.
That said, those who promoted the Center of Government at the Enfield Community Center’s session the next night would have preferred us to regard their big, pricey, downtown brick building as a done-deal. Yet reminded of Brown’s appraisal, and pressed to put facts behind their positive spin, leaders from County Administrator Korsah Akumfi on down acknowledged Thursday that political promises so far have fallen short of the assurances needed to break ground with confidence.
“I’m excited about this project,” Akumfi exclaimed at the engagement session. Akumfi’s office would be on the building’s third floor.
“We haven’t pulled the trigger yet, but we’re moving in that direction,” Dryden’s Mike Lane, the County Legislature’s longest-tenured member, said of a project. “We’ve been looking at it for at least 25 years,”
Arel LeMaro, Tompkins County’s Director of Facilities, equated the Center of Government’s design to a “slow-cooker crock pot.” How is that analogy drawn? “It smells nice, but it needs that time to simmer,” LeMaro said. “This is the time.”
Maybe… or maybe not.
The Tompkins County Center of Government sometimes resembles a lost commuter that’s passed through too any turnstiles. It’s done so for two-decades.
First conceived at the start of the millennium, and then, again, in about 2009, the Center of Government was once judged too expensive to build.
When former County Administrator Jason Molino and legislators revived the building project from dormancy a couple years pre-pandemic, plans then called for placing the structure a half-block down Tioga Street from the Courthouse. The building would stand where an orthodontist’s office was removed and a gravel parking lot now blemishes the neighborhood.
In 2021, after two years of Molino-supervised secrecy, Tompkins County walked the building’s footprint closer to the Courthouse. The County purchased both the former Key Bank at the Buffalo-Tioga Street corner, and the multi-attorney “Professional Building,” best known as Walter Wiggins’ former law office next door.
Since the combined $3 Million purchase, legislators have fixated on putting the Center of Government at the Buffalo-Tioga corner. The County-owned Board of Elections and Assessment offices—so-called “Building C”—would also be razed to accommodate the new edifice.
Infrequently, though not often—and indeed, less often as time goes by—some lawmakers have mentioned the prospect of siting the Center of Government “in a cornfield, ”as they quip; that is, on cheaper, vacant land far away from downtown. Alternatively, they might place it in surplus commercial space, like within Lansing’s increasingly-vacant Shops at Ithaca Mall. Many who lead us, however, greet that kind of rural-focused fallback option with derision. They consider it a non-starter.
But Enfield may look at choices differently. At least it seemed that way this past week. It could be that the farther one ventures from the courthouse block to Tompkins County’ rural reaches, the more one’s mind expands to embrace the ideas that others would discard.
“Go with the mall,” Supervisor Stephanie Redmond exclaimed, as the Enfield Town Board discussed Center of Government siting at the end of its monthly meeting June 11. “Everybody show up. Tell them you want them at the mall,” Redmond encouraged those who’d listen. In this instance, the Supervisor might be new to the issue, yet quick to direct action.
“I agree with you; I’ve been pushing this for a year,” this Councilperson, Robert Lynch, informed the Supervisor. “Unfortunately, it falls on a lot of deaf ears.”
One night later, at the community engagement session, Redmond reiterated her position; though later backed away from it a bit.
“I don’t want to be a wet blanket here,” Redmond cautioned meeting organizers, those who clearly favor a downtown location. But “we have a mall that is dying and falling apart,” Redmond observed of the Ithaca Mall’s ghost town persona. “What’s going to happen there?’ the Supervisor asked. “I hate to see excess space.”
“From my point of view, downtown property is very high value,” Redmond appraised real estate reality. It makes more sense, she argued, to locate at the mall “and give a life to a space that is dying.”
And to that comment, Tompkins County officials regrouped. They countered with an argument that holds some weight, yet only when taken no farther than it deserves to go.
Criminal prosecutors, defense attorneys, and all sorts of legal staff need to locate close to the Courthouse, County officials reminded Redmond. The District Attorney’s Office should remain only a brisk walk from the courtroom, they said. So should the office for Assigned Counsel. The County Clerk’s Office benefits from being handy to those accessing records or filing papers, the argument continued. Close proximity supports the case for downtown co-location, they maintained,
Upon hearing the counter-argument, Redmond altered course.
“You made a good case about why it has to be down by the Courthouse,” Enfield’s Supervisor acknowledged. She confined her remaining inquiries to topics more restricted, such as whether Tompkins County should reserve some visitor parking spaces for expectant mothers or those with young children, or whether building construction would demand a “local labor component.”
Given that the Ithaca Commons was reconstructed largely by out-of-area workers, Redmond said, “It makes it almost a mandate to use local labor.”
“We can look at that,” Enfield’s second Tompkins County legislator, Anne Koreman, told the Supervisor.
While Supervisor Redmond may have retreated from her out-from-downtown preference, this writer, Councilperson Lynch, the only other Enfield Town Board member in attendance that night, held firm.
The state may have served Courthouse eviction notices to the District Attorney and County Clerk, this Councilperson acknowledged, but nearby alternatives exist for them to relocate. There’s the Old Jail next door. There’s Building C, or maybe one of the structures Tompkins County purchased four years ago and would otherwise “deconstruct” to accommodate the new building.
As many as 13 Tompkins County offices would relocate to the Center of Government. Most require no Courthouse proximity.
For example, Human Resources would relocate in the new building. That sounds like a wise move. Yet remember that many employees will remain scattered elsewhere. A Highway laborer headquartered off Bostwick Road or a Health Department nurse based near the airport may find a personnel office quartered downtown a pain to visit, not more convenient.
And some Center of Government relocations may be downright inappropriate.
Tompkins County’s Office for the Aging would move from its storefront location at State and Albany Streets to the Center of Government. Legislator Brown singles out that relocation as particularly inapt, unsuited for older adults challenged in their pursuit for downtown parking.
“My biggest concern is access for constituents, how it impacts rural people,” Randy Brown told the Enfield Town Board. “How important it is for the residents in Newfield and Enfield to park there,” to have access, especially to “front-facing” services like the Office for the Aging.
In evaluating opinions among the 13 people who now represent Tompkins County in our Legislature, Randy Brown’s objections stand out. Here’s why.
Brown chairs the Downtown Facilities Special Committee, the committee that oversees the Center of Government project. On the morning of June third, Brown joined all other committee members in recommending County Government “commit” to the project and also, presumably, to fund it. But that evening, only a few hours later, Brown joined other legislative Republicans and Ithaca Democrat Travis Brooks to oppose a similarly-worded Resolution on the Legislature’s floor.
It wasn’t a flip-flop, Brown explained to the Enfield Town Board eight nights later. It was only that he believed the full Legislature needed to decide the matter. His committee support took it there.
“I don’t feel comfortable with our capital plan,” Brown told the Enfield Board June 11. And as to the building, he said, “It’s going to raise taxes. It’s going to happen.”
“I think it should be smaller,” Brown said of the downtown building’s footprint. “There are all these unknowns.”
“Size of the building is still up in the air,” Brown told the community engagement session one night later. The legislator then quietly left early to give his monthly report to the Newfield Town Board. (Because of the schedule conflict, Newfield government proved under-represented at the ECC event, even though the meeting was intended to serve all three of our county’s western-most towns.)
“It’s not a done deal yet,” County Administrator Akumfi qualified Thursday as to the project’s status.
Legislative math may back up the administrator’s equivocation. The “Approval of Funding” commitment resolution cleared the Legislature by a nine-to-four vote June third. All legislative seats come up for election this November. A recent resignation has left one current seat vacant. And the Legislature will expand to 16 members come January.
Randy Brown, Lee Shurtleff, and Travis Brooks, each who voted against the commitment resolution, stand unopposed for reelection. The fourth objector, Republican Mike Sigler, faces an opponent in the fall, yet still holds the edge to win another term. They’ll each likely remain onboard into next year.
Meanwhile, among those who voted in the commitment resolution’s favor—all Democrats—only three (legislators Black, Mezey, and Pillar) will likely return. The remaining six plan to retire. Nine fresh faces could prompt deference next year to hesitant critics like Brown, Brooks, and Shurtleff.
Back some 16 years ago, when Tompkins County briefly flirted with building a Center of Government on the Old Library site, Joe Mareane served as Tompkins County Administrator. Mareane famously scuttled talk of a Center of Government with the words “I can’t make a business case for it.”
This Councilperson resurrected the Mareane bottom-line reality check argument at the Enfield Board June 11.
“There’s a good question whether we should build it at all,” I told Town Board members. “Nobody’s made a business case for it that I can tell. Nobody’s said, ‘This is how much we save; this is how much it’s going to cost; we would save more than it costs.’”
“Joe was right,” legislator Mike Lane acknowledged the next night at the engagement session. “But things have changed a lot,” Lane insisted. He sought to blunt the “business case” argument.
“The Great Recession was happening then,” Lane explained. And since 2009, there is more staff; more programs, he said. “Joe Mareane had one deputy. We now have two. They have to have desks,” Lane countered the fiscal argument of cold-hearted calculation.
Bernard Best, Holt Architects’ Project Manager for the Center of Government, fielded questions about design specifics at the ECC meeting. Public-facing offices like the County Clerk would be on the ground floor, he said.
Assessment, the District Attorney, and the Grand Jury room would be one flight above. The Administrator, the Finance Office, and Human Relations would occupy floor three. The Planning Department and Information Technology would occupy the top floor.
The project manager emphasized design economies within the 48,000-square foot building, touting the “synergies of shared space.”
Somewhat startling, Bernard Best said there are no plans right now to dig a basement. He mentioned flood plain concerns.
“All of these have heavy security,” Bernard Best referenced to the floors of offices, citing the District Attorney’s floor in particular.
But what does “heavy security” actually mean, this Councilperson quizzed the project manager? Will it be a “buzz-in” system, like several county buildings already have? Or will there be more intrusive magnetometers and bag searches? How “user-friendly” will this new building be, Best was asked? He couldn’t say. The level of security is under a consultant’s study, was all he cared to state.
At past legislative and committee meetings, Groton’s Lee Shurtleff had warned of a Center of Government finding itself strained for space as soon as it’s built. With that worry in mind, would the building be built strong enough to hold up a fifth floor, if added later? The project engineer said it would be.
And what about connecting the new building to the Courthouse, a thought no one’s considered to date? “There is a thing called winter,” this Councilperson reminded everyone.
Bernard Best cautioned that historic preservation concerns at the landmark Courthouse argue against an above-ground causeway. But he then acknowledged that a subsurface tunnel to the Courthouse might work.
Newfield’s Liane DeLong was among the few unelected local residents who attended the engagement session at the ECC. DeLong raised parking and traffic concerns that continually challenge a downtown location. She also argued against adding that someday-fifth floor.
“It feels claustrophobic,” DeLong said of Ithaca’s newly-obscured downtown skyline. “It upsets me now. I hate it. So many are taller and taller and taller. Pretty soon we won’t be able to see the sky.”
Tompkins County has three more Community Engagement meetings scheduled this month to solicit comment on a proposed Center of Government. A meeting June 16 at the Dryden Village Hall will be followed by a session in Caroline one week later, and then a final forum at County Legislative Chambers June 24. Only the one in Chambers will be live-streamed.
Two further community meetings—but only to be held downtown—are planned for July and September as project plans advance. We may see a design sketch by late-summer.
That is, unless plans change abruptly by then, and we all simply head to the mall. But don’t count on it. Cooks hate to turn off the slow cooker when the soup’s so close to done.
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Postscript (June 16): Tompkins County held the third of its five Community Engagement meetings on the Center of Government project Monday night, June 16, this time in Dryden.
As with the earlier session in Enfield, resident turnout was sparse. County officials again outnumbered public attendees. But unlike in Enfield, no one in Dryden questioned whether Tompkins County should actually build the $50 Million office complex. Nor did anyone suggest an alternate site location, such as at the Shops at Ithaca Mall.
Questions posed during the 90-minute Dryden meeting—many from County staff and lawmakers—instead centered on space allocation within in the new building; provisions like bathroom facilities , lactation rooms, and even whether the new building’s windows would open to let in fresh air.
Dryden’s Mike Lane and Greg Mezey represented the County Legislature Monday, the only two from the body to attend. Both members June third had voted to support the Center of Government.
Mike Lane said he wants a building that “complements, but does not overpower” its neighborhood; “something the whole community can be proud of,” he said.
Project Manager Bernard Best confirmed that architects plan to present three different building design options to the public, thereby giving people the opportunity to pick which one they prefer. / RL
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