Listing draws buyer interest in Glen Edith

Investors have shown serious interest in the empty Glen Edith Restaurant and related property since it officially went on the market roughly a month ago.
Realtor Robert Miglioratti, who owns Executive Realty Group LLC and is chairman of Greater Rochester Association of Realtors Inc., is listing the property. It is said to be the largest remaining privately held parcel on Irondequoit Bay.
Listed for sale at $5 million, the Webster property is spread over 20 acres at the end of Glen Edith Drive, off Bay Road. The land holds the former Glen Edith Restaurant, two homes and several outbuildings, all of which are likely to be razed, Miglioratti said.
Originally, the property was developed in the late 1800s as a hotel resort called Drake’s Landing. It was purchased in the early 1920s by Anthony and Minnie Orlen, whose son and daughter-in-law, Anthony and Sandra Orlen, later took over the business.
In 1953, the hotel was demolished and the Glen Edith Restaurant was built.
The restaurant, which was open seasonally from April to October, still holds a lot of memories for many locals, including Webster town historian Lynn Barton. She began visiting the restaurant as a child with her grandparents.
“We always loved going there, like a lot of people in Webster. It just became a tradition,” she said. “Like a lot of people, I missed it when it closed.”
Sandra Orlen did too. After her husband’s death she continued to run the business until it closed in 1996. Since then, the building remained largely untouched until Orlen’s death this year.
Orlen’s daughter, Patricia Finnegan, returned to the area in 1985 to help her mother until the Glen Edith closed.
She remembers fondly the traditional duck dinners the family would put on for customers at the end of each season. Her father once printed the Glen Edith Restaurant’s napkins and matchbooks with the words, “Where every meal is a pleasant memory.”
Finnegan said her mother continued to live on the property after the restaurant closed. Orlen toyed with the idea of leasing the space, but Finnegan said her mother knew only too well how difficult it would be to watch someone else run the restaurant.
“She left it quietly for sale for years. My mom was not the greatest at making decisions, so the restaurant stayed there,” Finnegan said.
In fact, Finnegan said, the restaurant’s specials are still written on the specials board. Over the summer, the family held an auction to sell some of the restaurant’s contents, which for the most part went untouched since the mid-1990s.
According to town records, the property is assessed at $1.45 million.
Town of Webster Supervisor Cathryn Thomas said the property is zoned for medium to high residential use, which will allow different forms of housing development.
Of the vacant property itself, Thomas said, “It’s valuable because it’s waterfront-not because it’s developed.”
The property includes 500 feet of break-walled waterfront, which Thomas said made for a beautiful setting for a restaurant.
But Miglioratti said the former owner of the property was specific in her request that the property be used for residential development and not be put to commercial use.
He expects the property to be developed in a combination of attached town homes, with prices from $350,000 to $500,000, and some detached homes, ranging from $550,000 to more than $1 million.
“All (buildings) would have direct, owned water access with docking rights. I’m not sure how many could be built, but it is clear that the vast majority of the land space would remain green and undeveloped,” Miglioratti said.
With calls from investors locally and across the state, as well as some California investors, Miglioratti said interest in the land has been very high.
“Actually, we were recently approached by a local family that wants to build one single-family home on approximately one-half of the site,” he said.
Miglioratti estimates that a full approval process to develop the property could take two years.
“It would take two to three years to sell out the homes to be built,” he said.
Miglioratti has shown the property to some contacts in Albany and New York City.
Currently, the property is listed on an international commercial real estate Web site.
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12/2/05 (C) Rochester Business Journal