President's Report Masthead
March 31, 2018

Revitalization story mapping project documents a changing Johnson City, N.Y.

Decades ago, Johnson City was a vibrant, vital village in the Southern Tier of New York – part of the valley of opportunity created by the Endicott Johnson Corporation that, at its peak, employed 24,000 people and produced 52 million pairs of shoes a year.

Johnson City looks very different today – no bustling factories and plenty of empty storefronts. But with the construction of Binghamton University’s Health Sciences Campus on Corliss Ave., major changes are underway in the village.

And the Johnson City Revitalization Project – a story mapping project that organizes project information in a manner that tells the story of the revitalization process – aims to track those changes in a way that hasn’t been done before.

With assistance from undergraduate and graduate students and Geography department faculty and staff, Distinguished Service Professor John Frazier is charting new territory by documenting the current status of the Johnson City neighborhood where the Health Sciences Campus is taking shape – with plans to continue the documentation well into the future.

“We’re looking at the business side and people who are redeveloping buildings in the area, as well as how the redevelopment will spill into other areas,” said Frazier. “Most studies like this take place 20 years out, but we’re starting on the ground floor with this community and how it has degraded since the 1960s. Now we’re beginning with the contemporary picture to see the impact of state dollars and University assistance in growing the economy. It’s a good initial picture.”

Read more