City of Syracuse, NY

07/02/2025 | Press release | Archived content

Mayor Walsh Announces Street Art Project on Martin Luther King Blvd

Listen

Mayor Walsh Announces Street Art Project on Martin Luther King Blvd

Published on July 02, 2025

Syracuse Mayor Ben Walsh announced a street art project designed by students of STEAM at Dr. King Elementary outside their school on Martin Luther King Boulevard. The temporary pavement mural is part of a federally funded planning project to improve connectivity in the southside Interstate 81 corridor near where the highway viaduct will come down.
Community volunteers joined with City of Syracuse staff and members of the planning grant team, including the SUNY College of Environmental Forestry, SMTC, Blueprint 15, Centro and the Syracuse Housing Authority to paint asphalt art on Martin Luther King Boulevard adjacent to the school parking lot between Oakwood Avenue and Leon Street.

Designed by Dr. King fifth grade students, the mural features themes of excellence, life, laughter, growth, and peace. The goal of the project is to demonstrate how low-cost measures can reduce speeds and make the roadways safer for all users all while celebrating the community and the students.

"Improving mobility in neighborhoods requires imagination and comprehensive planning. A key part of that is traffic safety for pedestrians, cyclists and vehicles. Outside STEAM at Dr. King Elementary is an ideal place for a demonstration project on how projects like street art can calm traffic and make safer streets," said Mayor Walsh.

The project is part of a $500,000 "Reconnecting Communities" planning grant awarded to Syracuse to improve multimodal connections along the east-west corridors on the Southside that have been negatively impacted by the Interstate 81 viaduct for more than half a century. A second demonstration project will be conducted on the Southside later this summer.

Feedback will be taken from both demonstration projects and it will inform the development of concept plans for five critical corridors on the Southside: Adams Street/Harrison Street, Taylor Street, Martin Luther King, Colvin Street, and a linear park corridor in the East Adams neighborhood.

"A major goal of this project is to build engagement and momentum and to illustrate the benefits of traffic calming measures. We are working to ensure that the post-viaduct southside is safer and more connected than ever before," said Joe Driscoll, City 81 Project Director.

Media Inquiries

For media inquiries, members of the press should contact the Office of Communications by emailing press@syr.gov.

Related Information

  • Communications Office
  • Media Relations
  • Media Relations Policy
Tagged as:
  • Cityline, Traffic & Infrastructure News
  • City News & Press Releases
City of Syracuse, NY published this content on July 02, 2025, and is solely responsible for the information contained herein. Distributed via Public Technologies (PUBT), unedited and unaltered, on July 09, 2025 at 23:25 UTC. If you believe the information included in the content is inaccurate or outdated and requires editing or removal, please contact us at support@pubt.io