Brian Sharp and Steve Orr

Built more than 170 years ago, the aqueduct spanning the Genesee River in downtown Rochester is today an artifact — a foundation for the Broad Street bridge, a leftover novelty of the long-abandoned subway and a tapestry for graffiti artists.

But within its expansive depths, many have seen potential for the aqueduct to again power the city's economy as it did in the days of the old Erie Canal. And the city's preference for the aqueduct's return to relevance could be shifting.

"Not that we have taken any options off the table," said Delmonize Smith, the city's neighborhood and business development commissioner. But "what has been presented by Broad Street Underground, I think, fits with what we would like to see happen in terms of adding to a vibrant retail experience."

The Underground is a $21 million idea to convert the interior space into a two-level mall with niche shops, restaurants, even a nightclub. Glass would enclose the arched openings, and a sidewalk-level atrium could double as gallery space. The converted aqueduct also would provide a long-desired, climate-controlled passageway between the convention center and Blue Cross Arena at the Community War Memorial, making the city attractive to larger conventions and events.

"The question," Smith said, "is how does their proposal fit with some of the other proposals?"

Those other proposals include tearing off Broad Street and filling the old canal bed with water again and/or using some of the subterranean space for parking. The aqueduct is only part of the remaining old canal-turned-subway bed extending from South Avenue and West Main Street, nearly entirely under West Broad Street. The Underground expands on an earlier concept more focused on the utility of making the facilities connection that suggested the space be used as a museum or heritage walkway.

This month or next, the city will move forward in hiring a design firm to work on needed repairs to the bridge and aqueduct, including milling and replacing the asphalt road surface, repairing and replacing some bridge supports and joints, and also making improvements to include new lighting, benches, landscaping and crosswalk improvements. Fountains are possible, depending on funding, said City Engineer Jim McIntosh. The city has federal funds to cover more than half of an envisioned $4 million in work, likely to begin in fall 2015.

Once the federal money is spent on bridge improvements the aqueduct is then ineligible to receive additional state or federal funds for another five or 10 years. But a decision on which direction to take, long-term, "could be made easily within the next six to nine months," Smith said

Development has begun to drive greater attention to doing something along West Broad Street, with residential and commercial projects including 44 Exchange St., the Academy Building, Nothnagle and the Passero remaking of the Josh Lofton building.

"It's time," City Council member Elaine Spaull said of the need to get serious about infrastructure and the long-term plan. But the Underground? "I would be hesitant to say the city supports it and is ready to move it to the next step."

As recently as this summer, it appeared the Warren administration, similar to administrations past, favored re-watering. No decisions have been made, Smith said, but noted that re-watering "presents the greatest challenge in terms of cost."

Thomas Grasso, president of the Canal Society of New York State, proposed a decade ago that a portion of the historic canal, including the aqueduct that carried it over the Genesee River, be refilled. Replica canal boats or other small craft would be able to float lazily through the center city.

After becoming Rochester's mayor in 2006, Robert Duffy took hold of the idea and directed members of his administration to begin drafting tentative plans for such a project. Proposals have varied widely in cost. Spaull recalled one in the neighborhood of $60 million. The most elaborate (to include drawbridges) reached $200 million.

Under a version espoused by Grasso, the section of canal also would be connected to the Genesee, so boaters traveling on the "new" Erie Canal that runs south of the city could connect with the original 189-year-old canal that passed through downtown.

A fair number of people thought it a brilliant idea. A larger number scoffed, many of them citing the fate of the last big municipal initiative, the high-speed ferry to Toronto. The Duffy administration eventually put the re-watering project on the back burner. But Grasso is a patient man.

He notes that re-watering the Port Byron Erie Canal Heritage Park, Buffalo Canal Side and Commercial Slip, restoration of the Nine Mile Creek Aqueduct for navigation in Camillus all took more than 20 years to be realized.

"So why not Rochester? What is it about us, what is it that we lack, that other communities and organizations seem to have?" he wrote in an email. "Waterway projects all around and not a drop for us."

Given the seemingly established direction for the aqueuduct long-term it has been "a little bit of an effort" to work the Underground concept into the conversation, said architect Lewis Childs, who is part of the group advocating that proposal.

In the past year, a luxury apartment building was proposed for the corner of South Avenue and Court Street atop a part of the old canal bed, with the bed itself made into a private parking garage for the building's occupants. Some observers said that would seem to seal the fate of the re-watering concept. But city officials and others say that's not quite true, and there is perhaps a way for both to work, though developers are as yet noncommittal on what remains a conceptual idea.

The administration insists all ideas remain on the table and in play.

"Our short-term plan is to fix the bridge and clean up that area to make it look nicer. The long-term plan is to seek funding to re-water," McIntosh said several months ago and repeated something similar last week. "That would be five to 10 years out. The mayor is still interested in it."

But Don Jeffries, president and CEO of VisitRochester, said his organization's preference is one that would link the convention center and arena, and if it also provides a unique attraction, all the better.

"The other thing is it needs to be sustainable," he said. "You want to see them build it, and it needs to be maintained."

Promoters of the Underground claim it could cover the annual $2.75 million in operating and maintenance costs through naming rights, gift shop sales and rents (the plan creates an estimated 82,000 square feet of leasable space). Tax breaks could offset operating expenses in the early going.

The goal is to draw 480,000 visits a year, generating $56.5 million in spending — a number that might level off closer to $40 million, projections show. That translates to estimated annual tax revenue of more than $1.4 million.

As for construction, the project budget shows the developer and state paying 40 percent of the estimated $21 million cost, the city covering 5 percent and the remainder coming from grants.

Utilities likely would need to be relocated but also could be enclosed within a second-level walkway at archway level on the north side, with bridges crossing to upper-level shops. A skylight/atrium would be punched through the northern parking lane of the bridge, but Broad Street and the bridge exterior would otherwise be left alone. The glass used could be photovoltaic, to collect solar energy and convert it to power the Underground, Childs said.

There would be access points to the roadway above, or at either end, and an internal elevator. By the library, the entrance would ramp down to an amphitheater. The nightclub would sit beneath South Avenue, a trendy space that might double as a venue for TED Talks. To the west, the idea is to end at Exchange Boulevard, at least with the first phase. But Childs has plenty of ideas for how to use the remaining space.

"This would provide a lot more jobs than re-watering would," Childs said. "And there is no reason it can't have an outside impact."

BDSHARP@DemocratandChronicle.comTwitter.com/sharprocSORR@DemocratandChronicle.comTwitter.com/sorr1

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