East Main St. building next up for renovation

Mary Stone//May 29, 2009//

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As renovation of his mixed-use East Avenue property nears completion, businessman and developer John Nolan is turning his attention to the nearby Grove Place neighborhood.
Nolan has started clearing out two buildings, including the former restaurant Cathay Pagoda Inc., for conversion to retail, residential and office space.
Nolan said he bought the properties at 480-488 E. Main St. last month for approximately $700,000 from former owner Lois Lew. He plans to invest up to $500,000 in renovating them.
With 23,000 square feet, the building that housed Cathay Pagoda includes 18 residential units. While Nolan’s plans still are preliminary, the new layout could include 12 to 16 units.
“I studied the area for development, and that whole area is lovely. It has a lot to offer culturally; a lot of amenities there are primed for people who want to have a different quality of life and live downtown,” Nolan said. “That building always stood out as a problem, and one thing I like is doing jobs that can change an area.”
Nolan’s principal job is at Spex Precision Machine Technologies LLC. In his spare time, he redevelops poorly performing properties in well-performing areas.
At his latest project, the restaurant portion has been empty for the last three years or so, Nolan said. And a two-story building on Windsor Street, whose ground floor connects to the restaurant, has been boarded up for the last 15 years or more.
Former restaurant owner Lew used the adjacent ground floor for additional kitchen space on busy days.
“Previously the Cathay Pagoda had a great history to it,” Nolan said. “She just stayed too long there. She’s like 88 years old, so what happened is things started to fall into disrepair.”
The restaurant was in operation from the 1960s to the early 2000s, Nolan said, but the building’s history goes back to the late 1800s. Once called the Brown Building, it housed a glass company and furnace company at different times. For most of its life, Nolan said, the Brown Building has been mixed-use.
To determine exactly what new uses Nolan should explore, he and project architect Jon Schick recently met with the Grove Place Neighborhood Association, whose ideas for the downstairs included a deli, a market, a jazz club and a wine bar.
Association member James Bovay said he and his wife are excited to see that part of the neighborhood experience a turnaround.
“The plan looks very viable, very doable, and it’s going to clean up that area,” he said. “I can’t speak for the others, but I think you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone in the association who isn’t supportive.”
Schick said the neighborhood is looking for retail tenants that are going to extend business beyond normal daytime hours.
“Something to activate the building in the evening, to make the building a living building for a longer part of the day, so that it doesn’t just close up at sundown,” Schick said. “It seems like a small deli or market could be beneficial. There are a lot of people and students living down there. It seems like a place to pick up some necessities would be a nice thing to have there.”
The connected buildings, which extend to the property lines, do not allow for parking, which was one reason Schick said the development will not include condominiums.
For the last two years, Nolan has been working to develop two condominiums and retail space at 250-254 East Ave., next to Arena’s Florist Inc. Nolan and his wife hope to move into one of the condos by fall. Nolan and his team started the building’s facade this week.
“We’re doing our best to have the facade complete by the time of the Jazz Fest coming up in the middle of June. But it’s going very well. We’ve been busy on the interior and doing the roof work. Now we’re going to the next level,” he said.
For the East Avenue retail space, Nolan has attracted interest but said he wants to make sure that the tenant fits the needs of the neighborhood.
For Nolan’s East Main Street properties, apartments will be geared toward students from the nearby Eastman School of Music.
“The thought is to remove the connector and create a courtyard between the two buildings and reorient some of the entrances for the apartments to this courtyard in the rear and make it an active component of the development,” Schick said.
Beyond that, Schick said, it is too early to determine much else. It will be a year or two, Nolan said, before the project is complete.
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