Powers Building work stands test of time

Thomas Adams//June 10, 2011//

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Twenty years after reopening for business-and a decade after its acquisition by the Ashley Group-Rochester’s historic downtown Powers Building gives tenants a location close to legal and government offices near the Four Corners and has paved the way for rehabilitating others of the city’s oldest commercial structures.

"This is the sort of project that, in the field of historic preservation and planning, you are pleased to point to as a success on so many different levels," said Cynthia Howk, architectural research coordinator with the Landmark Society of Western New York Inc.

"The fact that it appears to be maintaining its popularity as a business entity is the reason historic preservation can function as a tool of economic redevelopment."

"It’s a building filled with smaller spaces, not major tenancies," said Laurence Glazer, CEO of Buckingham Properties LLC and a leading redeveloper of older buildings. "From that perspective it’s also very good, because it’s a place where smaller tenants can go, which is sometimes very hard to find.

"It’s got parking. It’s well-maintained. It’s really a good building, and what I would consider a major anchor downtown. Many of the buildings in the neighborhood around there have not spent the money to upgrade the building and modernize it the way they have in this building."

Powers Building tenants include its landlord, the Ashley Group, which moved in two years before buying it.

Several law firms have offices in the building, including Cellino & Barnes P.C., Blitman & King LLP, Easton Thompson Kasperek Shiffrin LLP and Rupp, Baase, Pfalzgraf, Cunningham & Coppola LLC.

Public Abstract Corp. and the Daily Record newspaper also are in the Powers Building. And the Albany-based engineering firm Clough Harbour & Associates LLP has an office there.

The building is not conducive to large tenants because of its style and construction, said Glazer, whose company is the largest property management firm and second-largest real estate developer in the Rochester market.

"There’s a lot of constraint in the building-walls and structural components-that doesn’t allow it to be used by big tenants like First Federal or something like that," he said. "But it’s still a good building and it’s a real anchor downtown. I know. I’ve lost people to that building."

The Powers Building is 75 percent occupied, Ashley Group president Mark Stevens said.

"The Four Corners area has been stabilized for decades by the legal profession, and government, obviously," said Heidi Zimmer-Meyer, president of the Rochester Downtown Development Corp.

"But what changed with the Powers Building was this concept of taking something old and historic and breathing new life into it, and having it be a functional, acceptable alternative in the conventional office market."

S.B. Ashley & Associates Venture Co. LLC-an affiliate of the Ashley Group-purchased the Powers Building in October 2001 from P.B. Associates L.P., part of Value Properties Inc. The deal came 13 years after P.B. Associates had bought the vacant building and then spent $20 million trying to restore it.

A separate Ashley Group entity, 16 West Main LLC, purchased the land on which the building is located, at the northwest corner of West Main and State streets. The acquisition totaled $6.3 million, Monroe County records show.

The parcel, including a land value of $700,000, is assessed at $3.8 million, county records show. It is across West Main Street from the Monroe County Office Building and a block south of City Hall.

Stevens declined to say how much Ashley has invested in the building since its purchase. After the deal closed on Oct. 3, 2001, firm representatives said they planned to spend $1 million on renovations, including the addition of a large conference area with meeting rooms, and improvements to the building’s exterior.

The exterior features a slate, mansard roof.

"We’ve continued with the renovation that was done," Stevens said. "We completed some of the work after we acquired the building. Each year we do selective capital upgrades on the outside because the building is very intensive to maintain.

"There’s a lot of slate replacement and selective capital expenditures outside, and interior on the marble work. So we keep doing a little bit each year."

Long history
The building’s history begins in 1865, at the end of the Civil War, with local banker Daniel Powers deciding to build a five-story structure to house his bank and various businesses and offices.

He aimed to make it the tallest building in the city. As others such as the Wilder Building across the street challenged the height, Powers added three floors from 1873 to 1888, as well as a four-story observation tower.

"It had such high impact because of the size of the building and its location, but also the quality of work," Zimmer-Meyer said. "The building itself is so gorgeous that it changed the view of buildings like that in the conventional office marketplace. I think that was the one that trip-started a lot of other building renovation work in the older building stock."

The Powers Building has steel frames with a facade of cast iron and ornamental stone designed to make it fireproof, the building’s website states. It was the first in Upstate New York with a passenger elevator, gas illumination and marble floors.

It also was the first commercial structure in Rochester to have electric power, which it generated from boilers, the website states.

"It’s been featured in all types of books on significant 19th-century commercial architecture," Howk said. "That triple mansard roof, the tower-it’s got a great story; it’s got beautiful materials. You could simply never make anything equivalent today. The prices would be out of this world."

The Powers Building is listed on the National Register of Landmark Structures and on the National Register of Historic Places.

"It’s one of the most photogenic buildings," Howk said. "Possibly of all the commercial buildings we have in downtown Rochester, this is the one that, hands down, has been photographed the most over its 140-year history. There’s nothing like it, in the region or the state, that I’m aware of."

The building was designed by Rochester architect Andrew Jackson Warner, who had an office there when work was completed, information from the Central Library of Rochester and Monroe County shows. It featured polished plate-glass windows, marble washstands, steam-heated radiators, bronze railings, and marble stairs and floors.

"It’s proven that with all of that elegant architecture and design, that it’s still a quality product," Howk said. "Andrew Jackson Warner was probably the most visible architect of that time period.

"You’ve got a building that is designed and flexible enough that it can move into the 21st century and still be a business success from the developer’s standpoint."

Troubled efforts
Its physical decline commenced when Powers died in 1897, with several developers stepping in to try to save or demolish the structure.

Rochester developer Ted Miller bought the building in 1986 and spent $1.5 million on exterior restorations before running out money and failing to secure an $8.2 million construction loan.

Miller sold the building to P.B. Associates in 1988 for $1.8 million. That company spent $20 million on renovations before selling to the Ashley Group.

"The first guys who did it went bankrupt and lost the building, but they did do a great job and spent a lot of money that, in effect, you probably couldn’t afford to do in a market-rate environment," Glazer said.

"The guys who picked it up on the rebound had the benefit, of course, of the first person’s efforts. It’s really a combination of two that turned it into a great building."

The building’s most notorious would-be developer was Thomas Termotto, an investment broker who preceded Miller in the mid-1980s and pledged to spend $15 million on renovations. He was unable to obtain the funding and fled the area without notice. He was later prosecuted for securities fraud related to other failed ventures.

"There were some fairly bombastic developers, very high-profile, who had a big megaphone in the press," said Zimmer-Meyer, who joined the RDDC in 1984.

Termotto and Miller, in particular, she said.

"Then these two developers crashed and burned," Zimmer-Meyer said. "The building became somewhat notorious by the time the Ashley Group took it on."

Ashley Group era
The Ashley Group provided a welcome change from Termotto and Miller because of its reputation as a "very sober, experienced real estate development and holding company," Zimmer-Meyer said.

The Ashley Group has provided the financial and management consistency missing from previous owners, she said.

"The building is big," Zimmer-Meyer said. "I think the concept of it was somewhat untested in the market. It cost a lot of money to redo the building. And I think as it burned developers out one by one, they left the building partly improved. And so each successive developer had less of a huge bite to make in that building."

Slate on several floors has been replaced, as has much of the copper flashing work on the building’s exterior, Stevens said. Much of the marble in the hallways has been repaired as well.

The building also is equipped with new systems.

"It has to have modern heating, ventilation, air conditioning and electrical that, certainly, over the years you have to upgrade," Howk said. "When it was done 20 years ago, we didn’t have the Internet and computers, and all of the requirements that that now mandates in a building, with Wi-Fi access and all that."

The physical appearance of the Powers Building has not changed dramatically, Stevens said.

"We’ve created numerous conference facilities throughout the building that people use," he said. "It makes it a very nice space."

The downtown site is not without some challenges, he said. Parking can be difficult, despite the presence nearby of the 1,001-space Sister Cities Garage on North Fitzhugh Street.

"Luckily, the property has got good location," Stevens said. "It’s in proximity to the municipal offices and the courthouses. That gives us a very attractive advantage. I think it definitely has a stabilizing effect downtown with the presence it has right here at the Four Corners.

"We view ourselves as more like a custodian for the building. It has such a grand history. We just want to make sure we preserve it and maintain the property going forward. Maybe it’ll be here for another 150 years."

The Powers Building, and others of historical significance in the Rochester area, are entitled to that, Howk said.

"You have to put these buildings back in a useful purpose," she said. "They can’t sit there like museum dinosaurs. If you’re looking for a signature location, it would be very difficult to top the look of this building. It’s so remarkable."