After the Mohawk Valley Health System announced plans for a new hospital in downtown Utica, New York, Bryan Bowers, a local developer, saw a business opportunity. He and his partner contracted to buy the former Rome Plumbing and Heating Supply building at 411 Columbia Street, across from Wynn Hospital, intending to offer medical office space. That project would have directly competed with another medical building next to it: Central New York Cardiology, which opened its Utica location in January 2024, three months after the hospital started accepting patients.
The cardiologists had different plans for 411 Columbia. In October 2021, their business, Central Utica Building, asked the Oneida County Industrial Development Agency (OCIDA) to seize the property under its eminent domain powers and transfer it to them so they could use it for a parking lot. Although Bowers objected, OCIDA favored Central Utica's proposed project, which it said would "result in the betterment of community prosperity within Oneida County." Last February, after years of litigation, a New York appeals court upheld OCIDA's decision, blessing the agency's protectionist intervention.
