Hey Syracuse, are you a creative person who wants
to be part of a creative community? Would you
like to live and work in the same place surrounded
with people just like you? That's what's happening
right here at the Gear Factory. I don't know
if you heard about this, but this is one of the
most incredible places for creative folks of
all sorts, whether you're musicians. photographers
every kind of medium you can imagine there's
a home for right here in the gear factory right
in downtown Syracuse in what will soon be known
as the art district right here in our area this
place has got everything man here is a shared
living space everybody's got uh kitchen areas
but so many that you don't have to fight over
them they've got this beautiful wide open communal
living space There's a gorgeous balcony. There's
a dining room table where you can come together
with your roommates, if you will, your floor
mates. and just celebrate things. And there's
also a gorgeous room that you have to yourself
when it's time for privacy and you want your
own aspects. Let's check that out. So this is
one of the actual rooms that you can have here
at the Gear Factory. As we talked about, they
got this incredible communal space out there,
but also sometimes you want your own space, you
want your own stuff. You can have a gorgeous
room like this. All of them don't necessarily
have quite as many windows, but they all have
big gorgeous windows. They all have your own...
full -size refrigerator. Ain't nobody gonna mess
with your food. Your dedicated heat and air conditioning.
You can control your own temperature in your
own room. That, to me, would be a deal breaker
if I couldn't control it. It's just this place
is really the most incredible thing. You really
should check out The Gear Factory if you're looking
for a new place to stay. Hey guys, Matt Maescher
from Good News York. I am very excited because
we are on site with a good buddy of mine, Rick,
here at The Gear Factory. If you don't know what
the gear factory is, well, you should probably
keep watching. We're going to give you a tour.
This is one of the most incredible places for
creative folks, anybody, musicians, artists.
I mean, we're going to hear all about it. But
first, Rick, thank you for bringing us here.
If you could just introduce yourself a little
bit and just give us a minute or two about what
this place is and what's going on here. Thanks,
man. This place most people know as the gear
factory. Had it for about 20 years now. I've
had the gear factory for about 20 years now.
It's been a long process as far as developing
it. But the core idea was how can we kind of
create that scenario where artists could be more
successful here in Syracuse rather than somewhere
else. So the building is a combination of artist
work studios, musician rehearsal studios, and
artists live work apartments. So there's regular
studios for people to be able to do their work,
make messes, things like that that you can't
normally do in an apartment. The rehearsal studios,
bands need to practice. When you turn on the
radio, it doesn't just come from somewhere. It's
actually, you know, that takes time and energy
and practice and everything to sound good for
us. So musicians are able to practice here. 24
hours a day whatever they want and be really
loud not have to worry about anybody calling
the cops on them and then for the people that
want to live and work in the same area that's
on the fourth and fifth floor we have that too
and that kind of that kind of really covers the
I think the the best parts about a creative community
are all the in -between times it's not when you
show up to meeting or show up to this or it's
all the in -between times everybody's guard down
as you're just kicking ideas around and talking
and hanging out. That's awesome, man. This is
a massive, what's your total square footage in
this place? 65 ,000 square feet. 65 ,000 square
feet. And you said it's five floors total? Five
floors up and one down. Okay, that's right. Wow,
wow, this is incredible. We're right, I guess
you'd say on the outskirts of downtown, is that
fair to say in the description? I don't know,
to me it's all downtown Syracuse, but... Yeah,
originally it was... Just outside of downtown,
I'm trying to make that part of downtown. Gotcha.
It's been a goal of mine. And there's incredible
development all around here. So I think you might
be on to something. And if we could just before
we move on, we give a little spoiler alert. You've
also recently picked up the historic property
next door as well, right? Yeah. 208 South Guetta
Street. Historically, that's known as the the
light shop. Recently, it's been a hardware store.
But in the late 1800s, there was this guy, Charles
Light. He was a graduate of Cornell, a local
inventor, and he bought the place, had more than
enough space in need of it for himself, so he
started running out of space to other inventors
and creative types. It was basically an informal
incubator. Over 360 patents came out of these
two little buildings here. Everything from pneumatic
tires to movie equipment to bicycle gears to
transmissions. It runs the gamut. A lot of things
we still use today. That's incredible. And then
are you going to use that space? Is it going
to be more for creative folks? Or is it a blank
canvas for you at this point? It's going to be
a little bit of a mix. I'm thinking the apartments,
some smaller apartments upstairs. I already have
a photographer and a clothing designer that moved
into one of the units. So it'll be maybe a hybrid
version of this and a few other things. Maybe
lean a little bit. Here there's more arts and
music and things like that. Maybe over there
we'll lean a little bit more into entrepreneurship
and things like that. That's incredible, Rick.
Well, listen, let's explore this place a little
bit. What do you say? Yeah, let's go. You give
us a tour? Yeah, let's go. All right. All right,
buddy. If you're here, you go that way. You can
see the cut on the floor. Yeah, so So basically
I could talk about whatever whenever and then
you could you separate the audio and the video
and yeah mesh it together, okay Matt welcome
to the gear factory as you come right in the
front entrance here I'll point out the stairwell.
We had to add this for a second means egress
during our bigger renovations. But for that,
I'd like to point out the building is the first
reinforced concrete building in the city of Syracuse.
Kind of like there was a time when reinforced
concrete was like the wild, wild west of like
internet or whatever. But what that really did
is that allowed for larger spans between columns.
So you had a much larger workspace. wide open
workspace. It allowed for the gigantic window
openings, so you had tons of natural light, tons
of natural ventilation, and the architect was
Albert Kahn. He's one of the first architects
really pushing factory owners from sweatshops
to, hey, you know what, maybe if you have a happier,
healthier work environment, not only will it
be good for you, but it'll be good for your employees
too. Wow. So when we cut this stairwell out,
I wanted to leave the... Open raw edge so you
can see the construction of the building the
hollow clay tile and it's kind of a concrete
truss system and I wanted to leave all that exposed
and all the steel work that was done by a local
Mac Brothers Boilermaker company. I wanted the
Boilermaker company to build the stairs instead
of a stair making company so it looked more raw
and industrial. And then to add a little bit
about the light shop next door and the relationship
between the two buildings. So that building became
known as the light shop. The area became known
as the cradle of ideas, the cradle of invention.
Basically, if you had a problem, you need something
invented or something worked out, you came down
to the light shop on South Gettys Street and
somebody there would figure it out for you. one
of the many good inventions, but one of the inventions
that really helped them to expand was they developed
a really good bicycle gear system, which slid
right over into the automobile industry at the
same time. And that's basically where this building
came from, the Brown Light Gear Company. They
became the largest gear distributors in the world,
making transmissions, transfer cases, things
like that. And about the light shop, I would
also just like to point out where maybe he had
something like Thomas Edison where he had groups
of inventors working for him and basically his
name ended up being the name on all the patents.
In this case, for the light shop, if you go down
through a history of the different businesses,
a lot of it was Brown Light Wilkinson, Brown
Light Chapin, Brown Light this, Brown Light that,
and you would see a lot of the same people getting
shifted around in company organizational. like
president, vice president, things like that.
They weren't taking ideas for their own. They
were taking on new people and they were helping
to develop them and develop their businesses.
And I always like to point out for all those
home runs that people like to get like the microns
or the carriers or things like that, this was
a situation where the area really fostered is.
fostered its small businesses and entrepreneurs,
and they ended up very quickly blowing up into
the giant companies like the gear factory, Franklin
motor car company, all those different types
of places that we try to hook all the time, but
this way they grew very quickly into those. You
guys want to water anything? Yeah, thanks. I'm
good. So Matt, you asked what came first, commercial
space or the residential space. I got the building
in 2005. And what I started out with was the
Originally the the previous company had offices
on the first floor in a certain area. So I converted
those to art studios and Had kind of a hard time
getting going that first year was not very fun.
Sure, but then I actually ended up Hooking up
with and getting to know a lot of more the artists
in the area. We ended up doing our first our
evolution show in 2006 that which helped me rent
a ton of the studio spaces and then A lot of
this is a combination of grassroots, community,
and developing a property with people. And even
as far as what it is, I have my thoughts on what
something should be. But I'll give you an example.
Every time somebody wants to talk about art stuff
or a building or this, and somebody always has
to bring up Build it and they'll come right?
Yeah, which is kind of annoying but I I interacted
with and I asked a lot of questions to the people
that want to use the space the end -user Yeah,
you know like the different artists different
musicians. What does the space have to do? What's
right here if in an ideal situation? What would
that look like right? Let's start there and see
how close we can get to it right so when these
When I finally got to the point where I could
build out the rehearsal studios, different art
studios, and the apartment stuff, it wasn't a
build it and they'll come. It was a build it
and they're already here. Because they were part
of the conversation the whole time. Wow. That's
great. Starting without a lot of anything, it's
one of the most valuable things I've ever had
as far as learning how to really work with people
and understand what their needs are and What
a what a business plan has to look like and how
to make those things work together That's that's
incredible. You've come a long way That's for
sure with all the things that that we've seen
so far Rick you mentioned briefly an art show
and I think that's something that that before
we let it go we should talk about for just a
minute because in addition to Folks who can rent
a place or live here and all these other things
You also really celebrate artists and have all
kinds of different events like this, right? Can
you talk about some of those shows? Yeah. Over
the years, we've had Art Revolution shows, which
those we had these big aviation engine crates
around and machine gun crates that would basically
would stack up and people hang artwork on them.
For those shows, there was no no commissions,
no door costs, no anything. And it was just a
way really to get a whole community of artists.
like regional artists all together in one room.
And basically just through word of mouth, invite
the public in. And it was great. Great. It was
less like, for the artists, it's not as much
like going to your house for dinner. It's like
if you went over to your friend's house and you
helped make dinner. So everybody basically contributed
to those. That's so cool. Other shows that we've
had on the first floor, a lot of times we've
been doing like monthly or bimonthly art shows.
Little bit of a delay over the last few months,
but the big thing that we're doing for the month
of December is the Delvan Center down the street.
Harold from Boxcar Press, he owns that building
now. And we talk and we work together on a lot
of different projects, but we've been trying
to really solidify with others. this stretch
of West Fayette, basically from the gear factory
to Del Van is Syracuse's genuine arts district,
and that's including Light Bar Park. And what
we've been doing for the past several years is
a holiday open studios, which we're gonna be
doing this year on December 6th from 10 in the
morning to five in the afternoon. There'll be
some food trucks, a lot of artists with their
studios open. Right now, I think then that number
is around 70 artists between the two buildings.
Oh wow I think we're gonna have some more and
that'll be a really good show and I know a lot
of times when I do Christmas shopping, we're
always Trying to buy local, but sometimes that's
hard sure so in this in this situation You can
just just show up and not only we be able to
to buy something that you see if you like it
But you'll also be able to go in and experience
what some artists studios are like and some workshops.
It's really cool. It's one thing to see a piece
of art on the wall and be like, oh, that looks
nice, right? But when you can see the amount
of work and the time and the detail and the thought
and the caring that goes into it, it definitely
means a lot more. Yeah, that's incredible, Rick.
So we should just take one moment and mention,
where are we right now? What section of the gear
factory are we in? So this is the second floor
of the gear factory. It's my kind of like my
last holdout. Yeah, all the other floors have
been developed so far I've had my office here
for a while and It's just the Clearly you've
got you got some workshop space. You got some
this is this is I could see it This is your this
is your play space and you need that right? Yeah
for everything that you got going on here This
is such a cool place. Yeah, it's kind of bittersweet.
It's like, I love this space all open and the
way it was kind of originally intended to be,
but it's not. You got to pair the usefulness
and that together. Yeah, so my last holdout,
we have kind of a DIY woodworking shop over there,
but other people do different projects on this
floor, too. Some people are just setting up to
paint, or somebody was building a bunch of stage
theater props and a bunch of things here a couple
weeks ago. They just loaded everything up and
out. I've had different graffiti artists do practice
here. I was just going to ask you about that.
So that's not somebody broke into the place.
This is artwork that you've encouraged folks
to let them practice. Some of this is before
pre -windows. I wouldn't condone just tagging
the building or anything like that. But as far
as different mediums, spray paint, graffiti work
is some of the most... It's my favorite thing
because to see what somebody can do on such a
large... detailed level and so quickly at the
same time, it's kind of amazing. So it's really
special to have these things just kind of hanging
out. Yeah, I totally agree. It's really cool.
I have to update it, but another thing that we
added to our website last year, the year before,
was the artist directory. Oh, cool. So there's
really a good way for people to connect from
outside the building, inside the building with
individual artists. And they can even search
between, like, if they want something that does
woodworking or clay or painting or whatever.
What a great resource. Yeah. That's awesome.
Yeah, we're looking for a better way to connect
the community with the people inside the building.
Yeah. Cool Is this a big loop? Yeah, this is
a big loop. Walk around if anything catches your
eye. Lot of photographers and a Lot of photographers
really like the natural light on this floor I
only went up eight feet high with the walls so
you'd have that That sunlight kind of like spill
over into the hallways and all around and have
this really big open airy kind of feeling This
floor we did several graffiti jams on so I ended
up it was it was There was no rhyme or reason
anything on the walls here. So for this one,
I was just like, let's just let's paint over
everything as it was originally intended. So
I have one floor that was kind of how the factory
would have been with the gray going up a little
ways and all the white walls or the ceilings
and all that kind of stuff for when it was a
factory. Wow. So the second floor where we were
a little while ago. That's going to be a very
similar layout to this except the walls are going
to be floor to ceiling and that way people have
a little bit more privacy. They can be a little
bit messier and louder and dustier and not worry
about disturbing their neighbors. Cool. All the
new heating and cooling systems in the building,
those are all air source heat pumps. So they're
very energy efficient. All the utilities and
Wi -Fi and everything are included with all the
studios and the apartments and everything. That's
awesome. It's like he knows that people are going
to grab that. Cool. Want to go to the fifth floor?
Sure. So Rick, where are we right now? So right
now we are on the fifth floor of the building.
This is where all the live work apartments are.
Basically the thing is like you had to be an
artist to be here and the apartments are on the
outside perimeter. The kitchens are set up so
that there's basically six kitchen stations in
one area and that way you can have two people
or multiple people cooking at the same time not
getting each other's way. Then everybody has
their own refrigerator so there's no refrigerator
drama. And the bathrooms are set up basically
like a bed and breakfast. But this big, huge
open area is kind of a workspace, hangout space,
whatever kind of space. And then the apartments
are basically just like one big studio. And one
of the key things I did on this floor is that
instead of doing it like a typical apartment,
which only would allow for about seven apartments
up here, this way to make the rents more affordable.
and still get the project done, I broke it up
into basically smaller studios. So instead of
seven apartments, basically there's 15 studios.
That makes it a lot more affordable, and there's
a co -living component. So all these people work
together and live together, and it allows for
a lot more interaction, kicking ideas around,
and hopefully all that in between time, and the
good things that come out of that. That's incredible.
That's incredible. So you said there's 15 units
on each floor? Yeah. Wow. Yep. Yep. And everybody
has a giant, huge window. And it's really pretty.
Wow. I see we've got a dining room table over
here. We've got some beautiful natural light.
Yeah. A lot of times I think people cook together
and eat together. It really seems like it's designed
to foster a really good sense of community. Do
you find that that occurs? Yes, yeah, definitely.
I worked really hard with people to figure out
that happy meeting between having your own private
space where it really feels like you're by yourself,
but also having that common space that's that's,
you know, you can just in your everyday life,
you're just kind of like stumbling across other
other people or you're bored. You just kind of
come out and it just it's really easy. Basically,
anywhere that you want to go, you're crossing
here, crossing there. So you're going to you're
going to know all of your neighbors here better
in probably a week or two than you would for
years living in a lot of places. Yeah. And I
got to. Imagine that it's likely that these are
sort of each other's people, right? It's not
necessarily like a random apartment building
where you get all kinds of folks with all kinds
of professions These are for the most part going
to be a lot of really sort of like -minded people,
right? Yeah, that's one of things that really
makes it work You could just throw a bunch of
people together and it could be a disaster but
There's whether it's a normal world or in the
in the art community there's a variety of different
types of people, personalities, and all these
different things. But the one thing that we have
here, everybody has in common, is that artist
component. So there's always something that connects
people. Awesome. It's kind of like food, too.
It's like, even if maybe you don't like certain
kinds of food, you can at least have an appreciation
for what goes into the different things. Cool.
I love it, Rick. This is really, really incredible.
So Rick, I got to thank you. We're now back to
where we started on the first floor. We've gone
through all five floors. We've seen the balcony.
We've seen the live work spaces. I keep saying
it, but the gear factory really is one of the
coolest things in Syracuse. First and foremost,
thank you for building this. I don't know if
you get enough thanks for that, what you've done
for the community here. And I think it's what
you set out to do, which is incredibly honorable,
is just to create something incredible and unique.
And there's five floors full of people here who
I think are very appreciative and more to come.
So thank you for the tour and everything you've
done here. And one more time, if you wouldn't
mind. Tell people about the event coming up,
and then give folks a website where they can
find more. Thank you, Matt, for coming over.
Aside from my place, I really appreciate how
you've been highlighting so many local businesses
and new businesses in the area. It really helps
everybody in the whole community out. Thanks.
As far as the event that we have coming up, it's
the annual Christmas Open Studios. Together with
Delphine in the gear factory same day same time
December 6 from 10 to 5 p .m. In the afternoon,
and it's just going to be Open to the general
public there's there's a there's a cover charge
of $5 but all of that is going towards public
art and light park and then you're just gonna
wander around and go in and out of people's studios
and not just see art, but see a lot of how it's
made and the stories that go along with it. It's
really, it brings art to like a whole new level
when you can see what goes into it. So yeah,
December 6th from 10 to 5, and hope we see a
lot of people there. Awesome. Rick, thank you
so much, man. Website, the Gear Factory, SYR,
is that the right spot? GearFactorySYR .com and
also go to the Gear Factory Facebook page or
Delavan and ticket sales are there. Perfect,
perfect. And the same places folks can go if
they're interested in maybe living or working
here, right? Is that the same spots? Yep, absolutely.
The gear factory website, my name and email and
how you sign up, how you apply is all on there.
Awesome. Rick, thank you again for joining us
on Good News York, and we'll see you soon.