It faced immediate competition, with the Ithaca area's first mall opening the next year in Lansing. In 1981, several vacant lots created by urban renewal were filled by the construction of Center Ithaca, a large mixed-use building with first-floor retail, an indoor food court connected to the Commons, and upper-floor offices and apartments. Together with the rest of Upstate New York, the Commons suffered through the 1990s with many empty storefronts. Rothschilds, a local department store, closed in the early 1980s, and its successors, Iszards (the only store outside of the Elmira area) and a McCurdy's store, closed in the mid-1990s. A McDonald's and a CVS also closed on the Commons in the mid-90s, and a block away, a Woolworths store closed in 1998. Then-Mayor Alan Cohen (owner of a restaurant located on the Commons) proposed removing the Commons and opening up the two-block portion of State Street to automobile traffic. At the turn of the century, the Commons's fortune began to turn around, due to increased investment and the rise of New Urbanism. The Downtown Ithaca Alliance, a business improvement district, was created in 1997 to revitalize the Commons and its surroundings. The vacant former Woolworths was renovated into the new home of the Tompkins County Public Library in 2000. In 2005, Seneca Place, a large mixed-use building incorporating retail, a Hilton Garden Inn, office space for Cornell University and Morgan Stanley, and the Ithaca area's first Starbucks opened adjacent to the Commons. Between 2003 and 2015, the Cayuga Green project replaced several lots of surface parking adjacent to the Commons with a new home for independent movie theatre Cinemapolis, an Urban Outfitters, two buildings of luxury apartments, and a new multi-level parking garage with first-floor retail. Another luxury apartment building, Gateway Commons, was completed nearby in 2007. But the Commons' aging infrastructure started to cause problems. In the late 1990s, an ad hoc city committee formed to discuss the future of the Commons. Their report, "Renewing the Design of the Ithaca Commons: The Report of The Commons Design Review Committee," was released in April 1999, and led to a $127,000 capital project. The project consisted largely of maintenance work, although it also paid for the removal of a large, brutalist fountain that had been turned off for years due to leaky plumbing. The fountain was replaced with a large, open paved area with seating. More temporary repairs were