Project planned with acquisition of Spring House

Will Astor//November 17, 2000//

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The owners of an adjacent Monroe Avenue strip mall are buying the historic Spring House restaurant in Pittsford, and plan to reconfigure the mall, another adjacent property and the national-landmark restaurant building as a new park-like mall.
Buying the Spring House is Monroe Clover Plaza LLC. Partners of Monroe Clover Plaza are developers Laurence Glazer and Harold Samloff, respectively CEO and chief operating officer of Buckingham Properties LLC.
Its current owner, Donald O’Neill, and his parents bought the restaurant in 1959. O’Neill, who has run the Spring House since 1960, plans to retire after the restaurant sale closes Jan. 1.
The new development Samloff and Glazer are planning-to be known as Spring House Commons-will stretch from the Spring House at 3001 Monroe Ave. in Pittsford to the corner of Monroe Avenue and Clover Street in Brighton, Samloff said.
The one-acre Monroe Clover Plaza-the site of Mann’s Jewelers Inc.-directly adjoins the two-acre Spring House site as well as a corner parcel that houses a Verizon Wireless office north of the strip mall.
Samloff said Buckingham intends to manage the finished development, and is currently working on plans to tie the three parcels together.
Plans for the finished development are now “in flux” with several options under consideration, he said. Initial presentations to Pittsford town officials, state Western Erie Canal Coordination Commission officials and the Landmark Society of Western New York were well-received, he added.
Samloff said the development’s final configuration will depend on the exact mix of tenants. But general design elements common to plans under discussion are extensive plantings, parking changes and improved access to the Erie Canal.
The Spring House was built in 1829 as one of the first inns on the 7-year-old Erie Canal.
The canal was rerouted in the early 20th century and its present course is roughly 1.5 miles from the Spring House. However, the town of Pittsford maintains the old canal bed as a linear park.
No official plans have been submitted to the town, Pittsford Supervisor William Carpenter said. However, he and Martin Brewster, town deputy public works commissioner, were “pleased and excited” by Buckingham’s initial presentation.
Roughly one-third of the planned Spring House Commons falls under Brighton’s jurisdiction.
Samloff said Buckingham has not met with Brighton town officials to discuss its plans. He said he expects no opposition from Brighton, since the property is zoned commercially and no change of use is planned.
The Brighton-Pittsford border cuts through a vacant 16,000-square-foot space that formerly housed the Music Lovers Shoppe Inc. in the Monroe Clover Plaza.
The vacant building accounts for roughly half of the strip mall’s leasable space, Samloff said. Buckingham is negotiating with several potential tenants, and expects to subdivide the space into smaller stores, he said.
Samloff said he and Glazer also are in talks with several potential new operators for the restaurant. No deal has been concluded. But he anticipates that a new eatery, possibly under a new name, will be operating in the historic structure by mid-2000.
It also is likely that the historic building will be subdivided into a smaller restaurant and several “boutique” retail operations. Other small-shop buildings could be erected on the Spring House land, Samloff added.
The Spring House is a nationally dedicated landmark. But the designation carries no restriction, so the only approval needed for such changes is by the town of Pittsford, which itself has named the building a historic structure.
The original Spring House-established by publican Joseph Tousey-ran as an inn through the 19th century.
The restaurant’s name derives from a mineral spring and spa that at one time flowed on Tousey’s land on a tract that is now part of the Oak Hill Country Club, O’Neill said, not, as many think, from the fact that the building includes a ballroom with a special “spring” floor.
According to the lore passed on to O’Neill and his parents when they bought the restaurant, it was run as a roadhouse in the early 1900s, but fell into abandonment and became a sanctuary for squatters during the Great Depression.
The building was renovated and turned back into a restaurant by a man named Scruggs in 1946, O’Neill said. But Scruggs apparently was less of a restaurateur than a visionary. He soon passed the operation on to other owners.
O’Neill said that his family acquired the place from a German family. The present structure includes two additions put on by the O’Neills.