Apartment for rent: Marble floor in the kitchen; bow window with sills wide enough for sitting; coat and bedroom closets; bathroom linen shelves; separate thermostat in bedroom and living area; sprinklers; wired-in smoke/carbon monoxide detector.
Those are some of the features in a first-floor apartment up for rent in the newly remodeled Olbiston Apartments on Genesee Street in Utica.
Few, if any, of the building’s studio, one-bedroom and two-bedroom apartments are just alike, though, given the angles and curves created by the building’s exterior and the bits of original marble and hardwood flooring salvaged here and there throughout the building.
Some apartments have a door onto a private balcony overlooking Genesee Street. Some have wooden fireplace mantels and surrounds (but without a working firebox) and some of those fireplaces have an ornately detailed metal fire back hanging under the mantel.
Liberty Affordable Housing, of Rome, the building’s owner since 2021, marked the completion of the 27-month project to rehabilite, modernize and preserve the Olbiston with a ribbon cutting last week.
The first tenants are expected to move in later this month or in early September.
About the Olbiston
Constructed in 1898, the Olbiston originally served the city’s upper crust with three-bedroom and bachelor apartments, and a seventh-floor dining room. Eventually, though, as times changed, the apartments became subsidized housing.
Then in 2021, after years of slow decline, the city deemed the building unsafe and evacuated the last 60 tenants.
In the rejuvenated Olbiston , all 153 apartments bear traces of the building’s luxurious past while accommodating the needs and building codes of modern life.
It now provides what local officials and housing advocates say is most needed in the city — affordable housing that is safe, comfortable and well maintained.
The building’s red sandstone, Romanesque revival façade, with its turrets, wrought iron balconies and rows of bay and bow windows remains the same, down to the original wavy glass in the windows. Historic preservation codes made sure of that.
Inside, things changed. Contractors had to rip out every wall, said Tim Tarvox, Liberty’s vice president of construction and facilities.
The two elevator shafts were rebuilt and new elevators put in, making this the first time since the 1980s that the building has had two functioning elevators, he said.
Wherever possible, the original marble and hardwood flooring were salvaged.
The metal railings on the indoor stairways remains, just like on the balconies. And the original canopied walkway out front —an awning supported by ironwork columns and railings — was re-installed.
But most of the original interior is gone. The building’s 120 apartments (at the time it was closed) were reconfigured into 153.
But, much of the new was designed to look like the old: hardwood flooring to closely match the original portions that are left; plaster work on the walls in the halls to reproduce the pattern in the tin tiles that originally covered hallway walls; new, gray-painted apartment doors with decorative molding forming squares to mimic the look of old doors; and the reproduction of the original undulations where the hallway walls meet the ceilings.
Old vs. new
Former Olbiston resident Isaac Foster walked through the open house, trying to get his bearings. He looked at a kitchen and said it used to be the living room. A bathroom was once a hallway and what used to be the location of a two-bedroom apartmen,t now has one bedroom.
Foster spent nine years living in a few apartments in the Olbiston with some time in between spent living elsewhere, he said.
As he wandered, he also saw back in time to the day he came home to find a crowd of tenants and representatives from different offices and agencies on the sidewalk in front of the building. He was told, Foster recalled, that he couldn’t go back inside.
Foster cried as he remembered the pain of being, as he put it, left out on the street. He did receive a voucher to spend two or three weeks in a motel, but after that he ended up living in his car for several months, he said.
Now he has a job and an apartment, but he’d like to come back to the Olbiston, he said.
More Olbiston photos:A look at the newly renovated Olbiston Apartments
“I lived here nine years,” Foster said. “I deserve my apartment back, especially (with) how I was put out.”
Foster said he asked someone about moving back and was told no rudely. But it’s not clear whom he asked and whether that person works for Liberty.
All former tenants are welcome to apply to come back, said Alyssa Eads, director of marketing. They would just have to meet the income qualifications, she said.
Here are more details about the renovated Olbiston Apartments.
Does Liberty have any other local apartment buildings?
Yes, Liberty owns a number of apartment buildings in the state.
Locally its properties include:
- Parkedge Townshomes in Utica.
- Kennedy Plaza Apartments in Utica.
- Park Drive Manor I and II in Rome.
- New York Mills Senior Center (senior housing).
- Mohawk Valley Apartments in Clinton.
- Clinton Manor Apartments (senior housing).
- Camden Apartments (senior housing).
When will tenants move in?
Liberty Affordable Housing has started reviewing applications, a process that can take about two weeks, Eads said. The first tenants are expected to move in at the end of August or in early September, she said.
How much is rent?
- Studio: $737/month
- One-bedroom: $769/month
- Two-bedroom: $991/month
What are the income qualifications to live there?
Tenants must be financially eligibility requirements. Most of the apartments are reserved for households earning 50% or less of the median area income, Eads said. That works out to no more than the following amount per month, depending on household size:
- 1 person: $36,960 or less
- 2 people: $42,240 or less
- 3 people: $47,520 or less
- 4 people: $52,740 or less
There are also a handful of apartments that will be rented out to households earning up to 80% of the area median income, Eads said.
Housing vouchers may be applied toward the rent, but the apartments are not subsidized.
So there is also a minimum income to live in the building, Eads said. Residents must earn each month at least 1.75 times the monthly rent for the apartment they want.
What is in the building besides apartments?
The seventh floor of the building’s central section, once a tenant dining room, has been converted into a community room and computer work room. It contains a refrigerator, a microwave, countertops and a shelf for serving. Its balcony offers dizzying views of the city.
The seventh floor also contains a storage room for residents and a laundry room with 10 front-loading washers and 10 front-loading dryers. Cell phones can be used to pay for the washers and dryers.
There also one new amenity outside the building — a fully paved parking lot in the back.
What are some of the modern features in the apartments?
- A heating/air conditioning unit on the wall in each bedroom and the living/dining/kitchen area, with each unit controlled by a separate digital thermostat that can be controlled from tenants’ cell phones.
- Outside walls also have an electric baseboard heater, as per building codes.
- Sprinklers.
- A wired-in smoke and carbon monoxide detector.
- A coat closet, a closet in each bedroom, kitchen cupboards and either a closet, shelves or a cabinet for linens.
- A peephole in the apartment doors.
- New kitchen appliances.
- Dimmable lights in every room.
Are utilities included?
Rent includes water, sewer and trash removal.
Other utilities are not covered, although the apartments are energy efficient, which should keep the cost of heating, cooling and electricity lower than in many other apartment buildings, Eads said.
What are some of the buildings' energy-efficient features?
The Olbiston has a roof membrane with insulation, cold climate heat pumps with high energy efficiency ratings for heating and cooling, a centralized hot water system with a 98% efficient boiler, LED lighting and Energy Star-rated or equivalent appliances.
The building is LEED-certified.
