Anecdotally many people coming from the West to go Downtown cut over Varick to avoid the Court Street-Arterial intersection. One can imagine this small change significantly increasing the traffic at that intersection, thereby justifying the Arterial Overpass at that location that suddenly seemed to have appeared out of nowhere on both the "Depressed Highway" and "Boulevard" alternatives for the proposed Arterial remake -- an overpass that many who live and work in West Utica find objectionable.
Without knowing what we are doing, we may wind up actually killing the businesses on Varick, and at the Finish Line on Court, and create a need for an overpass that will isolate this neighborhood completely.
Be sure to follow through and read the comments.
The current Varick Street "plan", isn't. It's a happy-happy dream of urban renewal via wish fulfillment, the same kind of misdirected development that has squandered millions in public funds. The idea has a lot of potential, but moving ahead with the current proposal without building up a body of supporting evidence that the idea will actually work is a recipe for yet another disaster.
