A graffiti-covered building hulks over the end of Flint Street — a dilapidated monument on a blighted landscape in southwest Rochester’s Plymouth-Exchange neighborhood.
The building is part of the Vacuum Oil site, a 24-acre property along the Genesee River waterfront that once held an oil refinery (it shut down in the 1930’s). In the decades that followed, parts of the site were used for various other purposes, including a junkyard.
But neighbors and city officials see potential in the site. Instead of decay and debris, they see the possibility of an inviting and publicly accessible waterfront with new mixed-use development nearby.
