Pa. couple buys waterfront site for $1.2 million

Will Astor//August 30, 2002//

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Thendara Inn & Restaurant-the waterfront dining spot on Canandaigua Lake-has been sold.
William and Tracey Pellicano of Malvern, Pa., paid $1.2 million for Thendara and several surrounding acres, a deed filed with the Ontario County Clerk’s Office shows. The property is several miles south of the city of Canandaigua in the town of Gorham.
Whether the upscale Thendara or its casual-dining adjunct, the Boathouse, will continue as eateries, and whether the inn still will take guests, is unclear.
Former Thendara owner Peter Stone did not return the Rochester Business Journal’s call. Stone is a principal of Culinaria LLC and Thendara Associates LLC, which continues to run the inn and restaurants.
Thendara Associates bought the inn and restaurant in 1999 from former owner Ruth Schwartz for $900,000, Ontario County records show.
Doing business as the Gateway Group, Culinaria owns and runs Hawthorne’s Restaurant in Pittsford, and operates a catering service using the Gateway Banquet and Conference Center name. It also runs Cutler’s Restaurant at the Memorial Art Gallery in the city and a restaurant at Genesee Country Village & Museum in Mumford.
Thendara staff said they have been told the Canandaigua Lake inn and restaurants will operate under current management until Sept. 30. But neither Culinaria nor the Pellicanos have revealed the new owners’ plans for the lakefront complex after that date.
County employees and others in the area have speculated that Thendara would close and revert to its roots as a private residence. But Gorham town zoning officials said the Pellicanos have not applied to change the property’s commercial zoning.
Thendara was built as a lavish residence by an Ontario County lawyer and politician named John Raines in the early 1900s. It was converted to an inn in 1988.
Raines sandwiched two terms in Congress between stints in the state Assembly and state Senate in the latter half of the 19th century and early 20th century. He served as president of the state Senate until his death in 1909. Raines took the name Thendara from the Seneca name for the Canandaigua Lake cove where he built his home. The word means meeting place.
William Pellicano has been acquiring lakefront parcels surrounding Thendara’s several-acre site since 1998. Deeds recorded in Ontario County show he bought a parcel south of Thendara at 4332 Deep Run Cove in 1998, and parcels at 4336 and 4328 Deep Run Cove in 1999.
Pellicano also bought a site on Route 364 that abuts the Thendara property in 1999. The Thendara acquisition puts all but two parcels on the cove-separated by Pellicano-owned properties-under Pellicano’s ownership.
Documents filed with the Monroe County clerk indicate that Stone sold the historic inn under heavy financial pressure, including creditor lawsuits in state Supreme Court, significant state and federal tax arrears and the possibility of a U.S. Bankruptcy Court order to pay sums to Perk Development Corp. creditors.
Last year, Stone signed a judgment by confession filed in Monroe County against Thendara Associates, Culinaria and himself personally admitting that he had failed to make promised payments on an $82,255 debt to New York Capital Equities Inc., which is headed by former Village Green Bookstores Inc. owner Paul Adams.
One week after the June 7 closing on Thendara, New York Capital Equities filed a partial satisfaction of the judgment, stating Thendara Associates had earlier paid $22,017 and had now satisfied its debt with a second $50,000 payment. That leaves Stone owing $82,255 and Culinaria apparently still owing $10,237, court records show.
Culinaria, Hawthorne Hill LLC and the Gateway Banquet and Conference Center are facing creditor actions filed in state Supreme Court by Frontier Telephone of Rochester Inc. and AJ Credit Corp.
And over the last eight months creditors including Palmer Fish Co. Inc., the Travelers Indemnity Co. and Oxford East Landscape & Design have obtained small, but still unpaid, judgments against Hawthorne Hill. A $31,943 judgment against Culinaria obtained by Maynard’s Electric Supply Inc. in 2001 remains outstanding. Also outstanding is a $1,483 judgment against Culinaria dba Gateway Banquet and Conference Center by Rochester Gas and Electric Corp.
The Gateway Center is also at the heart of Perk creditors’ case against Culinaria.
Perk formerly ran 43 Perkins Family Restaurants comprising all but three of Perkins’ New York franchises. Perk was owned equally by three principals: Michael Cavalcanti, John Kendall and Louis Bianchi. They were equal partners in other enterprises, including Rochester-area Chili’s Grill & Bar franchises, commercial real estate ventures and Gateway.
Perk creditors maintain in the bankruptcy court case that the Perk partners wrongly funneled some $27 million in Perk profits to the Perk partners’ other, legally unrelated enterprises.
Perk did not make it through a Chapter 11 in which it declared more than $20 million in debts. Its Perkins locations were bought in a bankruptcy auction by the Denny’s restaurant chain. And though the Perk partners remain legal partners in remaining non-Perk ventures, they have in effect gone their separate ways.
Bianchi already was retired when the bankruptcy commenced in 1998. Kendall now operates several Chili’s restaurants. Cavalcanti retained Gateway’s former banquet and conference facility in Henrietta.
Perk creditors committee attorney Jack Weider of Harter, Secrest & Emery LLP said Cavalcanti, early in Perk’s bankruptcy proceedings, told Perk creditors he had passed Gateway assets to Gateway’s food and beverage manager, Stone. Cavalcanti claimed those assets were of no value.
Stone for a time operated the Gateway center in Henrietta under Culinaria, leasing the facility from a Perk partners’ firm called Edinboro Corp. Last year, M&T bank took over the Gateway property and evicted Culinaria. Culinaria maintains a Gateway Group Web site through which it continues to advertise the Gateway Center as a catering facility, but the Gateway center number given on the site rings into Hawthorne’s.
Perk Chapter 11 plan administrator Daniel Kirk last year filed judgments totaling $16 million against several inactive and probably assetless Perk-partner enterprises.
Perk creditors’ case against Culinaria remains one of the last left open in the four-year old Chapter 11, Weider said. He declined to say how much creditors think they may be able to extract from Culinaria and related entities. The court has yet to rule on the Perk creditors’ theory that Culinaria gained from money that should have gone to them.
Still, Weider said he is hopeful of shortly wrapping up the case with a distribution to creditors, possibly as early as September.
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