A Syracuse-based trucking company filed a lawsuit on Monday at the state Supreme Court in Onondaga County alleging racial discrimination, retaliation and unlawful business practices against contractors involved in the state’s Interstate 81 Viaduct Project. 

Larry Stackhouse, the owner of the trucking company L Stacks Construction Co. LLC, was hired by the contractors in 2024 when the first phase of the project began. His recruitment was part of the mandatory local-hire and minority-owned business participation in the project, the lawsuit stated. 

While the construction company used Stackhouse’s bid numbers, certifications and local-hire compliance information to win state contracts, they did not assign him enough work through the project, he wrote.

He was eventually sidelined by Salt City Constructors LLC, the prime contractor of the I-81 project, in favor of non-minority contractors, Stackhouse alleges in the lawsuit. 

Anticipating a huge influx of revenue, Stackhouse also invested almost half a million dollars into the acquisition of new dump trucks and other maintenance costs.  

“I felt depressed. I felt that they turned on my company and to see all the [non-minority] contractors working up there, it hurt me,” Stackhouse told Central Current during a sit-down interview on Monday. 

The complaint was filed by Stackhouse’s attorneys Romeo and Romeo, P.C. of Syracuse, and New York based law firm, McCallion & Associates LLP.

Stackhouse’s contract is part of the state Department of Transportation’s local hire initiative, which was meant to incentivize the recruitment and employment of local residents for the $2.25 billion project that would see the replacement of the viaduct and a reimagining of Almond Street. 

The initiative encouraged the hiring of 15% of the overall workforce from certain zip codes in the city, including areas near the viaduct.  

Stackhouse wrote that the contractors “misrepresented” their hiring practices to federal, state and local officials. 

Stackhouse named several defendants in his lawsuit, including Salt City Constructors LLC, Lancaster Development and Tully Construction Co. LLC, D/B/A L&T Construction, D.A. Collins Construction Co. Inc. and Cold Spring Construction Co. Inc. 

He also included the names of Salt City employees Marybeth Aylesworth and Darren Collins who were in charge of scheduling minority-owned enterprises and disadvantaged business enterprises in accordance with the state guidelines. 

Salt City Constructors have not responded to Central Current’s request for comment. 

The work Stackhouse was contracted to do will ultimately culminate in the replacement of the viaduct with an alternate Community Grid. The Department of Transportation is carrying out the project in stages, with the last phase scheduled for late 2026 or early 2027 which will see the viaduct’s removal and the redesign of Almond Street. 

More than 50 years ago, the historically Black neighborhood on Syracuse’s South side, better known as the 15th ward, was devastated by the construction of the I-81 Viaduct. 

Despite pushback from some local elected officials, the City of Syracuse allowed the viaduct to cut through the neighborhood. Over 1,300 families were displaced while homes and businesses were razed to the ground. 

This had long-term socioeconomic impacts on the displaced, predominantly Black residents. As they struggled to look for new places to live, they faced housing discrimination and inequality. 

Residents soon moved to the south of the viaduct to form a new neighborhood that was devoid of enough resources. Additionally, they bore the brunt of air pollution leading to high rates of asthma and other respiratory issues. 

“It’s not just the rebuilding of bricks and mortar and a highway,” Robert Romeo, Stackhouse’s attorney, told Central Current. “There’s a promise now that this was going to be rebuilt primarily with our local community, and a big part of that, the minority community. And so [Stackhouse] took that to heart,… But then, through a system of discrimination, he was downgraded and degraded and left out of this project to a large degree.”

‘Emotional toll beyond financial loss’

Stackhouse, 63, is a Syracuse native who grew up in a family of ten children. In 1981, Stackhouse started as a diesel mechanic at the Central New York Regional Transit Authority. He worked his way up to serve as the senior director across four counties, namely Onondaga, Cayuga, Oswego and Oneida, writing statements of purposes for projects worth billions of dollars. 

After he retired in 2018, Stackhouse started his own construction company, looking to get involved in the state’s I-81 project. In 2025, his company was named a “Business of the Year” by CenterState CEO. 

“I thought [the I-81 project] was a win-win situation for minorities and that was a great opportunity for me to get involved and bring in individuals who were deprived of an opportunity,” Stackhouse told Central Current. 

After Stackhouse was awarded the contract from Salt City, he employed people and bought new dump trucks to join the historic revitalization of the old 15th Ward. His company incurred $450,000 in expenses, as he had anticipated nearly a million dollars in revenue, he wrote.

But the workload he anticipated never came. The contractors employed only one of his three available trucks, he alleged. 

Non-minority contractors operated up to six trucks daily but Stackhouse was often left in limbo  “for extended periods” waiting for work to be assigned to him, he wrote in the lawsuit. Salt City hired non-minority contractors from outside Syracuse to do the same work Stackhouse believed he had been promised.

When Stackhouse confronted the companies, he said he was met with hostility and retaliation. 

According to the lawsuit, Stackhouse first complained to Aylesworth, an employee of Salt City, in early 2024 before escalating his concerns to the state Department of Transportation. Following a meeting with other subcontractors, Aylesworth allegedly made internal complaints about Stackhouse having “made a scene,” the lawsuit stated. 

NYSDOT spokesperson TeNesha Murphy said that the Department of Transportation had no comment on pending litigation.

Following the complaint, Stackhouse received written communication from Collins about being “disruptive.” Collins threatened Stackhouse that further complaints could result in his termination, Stackhouse wrote in the lawsuit. 

Stackhouse said he was then excluded from the daily dispatch system and Aylesworth told him that “no work [was] available” for him on the project. Stackhouse also alleged in the lawsuit that he was removed from a group text dispatch list that would have allowed him to track the daily work assignments.

Being shunned by the contractors, despite lofty promises, was a major blow to Stackhouse’s business and reputation, he told Central Current. 

Shortly after, he burst into tears, as his attorney, Romeo told a Central Current reporter that it was very “emotionally disturbing” for Stackhouse.

“The emotional toll this has taken on Larry [that’s] beyond financial loss,” Romeo said. 

Stackhouse added that he helped other certified Black owned trucking firms to access the I-81 project but later watched contractors “that didn’t look like us” take on the project instead of his company’s truckers.

Stackhouse did not disclose the extent of the damages he is seeking in the lawsuit but wrote that he preferred damages to be determined during a trial. He also requested the contractors be punished if it is found they discriminated against him. 

“We are here because we want to seek justice for Larry and we don’t want to see this happen to anybody else,” Romeo said. “It’s a pattern and we’re going to show that in court. Larry is standing up for himself and others.”

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Debadrita Sur is a multimedia journalist and Report for America corps member who reports on the I-81 project and public housing for Central Current. In 2023, Sur graduated with a master’s degree in journalism...