Gatherings buys Daisy Flour Mill for banquet spot

Listen to this article

The 157-year-old Daisy Flour Mill along Ellison Park has been purchased for $700,000 by Gatherings at the Daisy Flour Mill LLC to be used as a banquet and wedding center.
The renovated site will debut Sunday for a crowd of 400 for Mother’s Day brunch.
Gatherings, a Churchville-based catering firm, is the Inn on Broadway’s caterer. The Inn, a boutique hotel and banquet hall saved from foreclosure last year, is slated to become a steak house-a fact that prompted Gatherings to look for another location.
The Daisy Flour Mill’s former owner, JHS Associates LLC, with James Sauer as president, closed the site on Blossom Road late last fall, documents filed with the Monroe County clerk’s office show. Sauer could not be reached for comment.
Gatherings took possession of the site in December and closed on the sale in March. The catering company also owns the Senator’s Mansion in Churchville and provides catering services for other locations, including the Inn on Broadway.
Gatherings’ contract with the Inn on Broadway is up at the end of October, Gatherings principal Christopher Steubing said. Gatherings paid the Inn’s owner $12,000 a month for use of the site for banquets and weddings.
The Inn on Broadway’s owner plans a full-service grill and restaurant for the site.
Inn on Broadway LLC, the owner of the hotel/banquet house, is headed by Robert Fallone Jr., a local dentist and developer.
Fallone took ownership of the property in January from Integrated Financial Solutions LLC.
He is renovating the building, intends to keep the Inn’s 23 guest rooms and hopes to have the steak house open Aug. 1, Fallone said.
“With our lease ending, we needed another Rochester venue,” Steubing said. “Jim Sauer called me last fall and asked if I would be interested in buying (the Daisy Flour Mill).
“Well, my wife and I had some of our first dates there, so we feel good about the place. I looked around and saw so much potential.”
The company added two full-time employees to help with the extra work at the Daisy Flour Mill, bringing Gatherings’ full- and part-time staff to 54. The firm will be adding more part-time staff soon, Steubing said.
He is spending some $300,000 to renovate the site, a former grist mill on Irondequoit Creek. The grist mill closed in 1972.
“We call it Operation Restoration,” he said. “I have been giving the old girl a facelift.”
The restaurant has new carpeting, paint and window treatments, Steubing said. The ballroom has been redecorated, and an architect has been hired to build a deck off the ballroom for weddings.
Along with parties and conferences, Steubing hopes to open the Daisy Flour Mill one night a week for dinner with an a la carte menu.
“It would be a great way to let people see what a great place this is,” he said.
The Daisy Flour Mill, operating as a restaurant and party house, closed suddenly last fall. Events scheduled for the remainder of the year were referred to other facilities.
The Inn on Broadway, the former University Club, received Chapter 11 court protection in 2004 and managed to stave off a foreclosure sale while paying off more than $2 million debt.
([email protected] / 585-546-8303)

05/06/05 (C) Rochester Business Journal