A downtown redevelopment project that once promised to pioneer a revival of West Main Street is finally underway.
Building owner and developer Milos Vojvodic plans to renovate the Executive Building at West Main and North Fitzhugh streets for apartments, offices, a restaurant, and a marketplace that could include a bakery, a pizza station, and a coffee shop.
“The only thing that's changing is now we're scaling it back to a phased project, versus doing it all at once,” Vojvodic said.
There will be three phases in all, with work expected to take three or four years to complete. First comes offices for the Monroe County Public Defender.
The eight-story building was once the glamorous Powers Hotel, described in its heyday as the “Waldorf of Western New York.” The hotel opened in 1883 with 300 beds, a 500-seat banquet hall, and four dining rooms. A cast-iron street-level storefront now hidden behind stucco will be uncovered and restored, Vojvodic said, and the cornice will be replaced atop the building.
Work was to begin in 2021, and be completed by now.
The pandemic, and time-consuming financing approvals slowed progress. More recently it was rising interest rates and construction prices that complicated things.
“We got some insultingly high quotes and bids to a point where it just didn't make any sense,” Vojvodic said. “So then I scaled back.”
He also parted ways with business partner Sam Savarino, who recently announced he was shutting down his Buffalo-based development firm Savarino Companies.
The firm blames its demise on a troubled student housing project at Alfred State College. There, Savarino says it ran into similar pandemic-related issues with delays, supply chain and labor shortages, and came to loggerheads with the state Dormitory Authority. The state ultimately kicked the company off the project, setting in motion a series of financial ramifications that Savarino says drove the company out of business.
This would have been Savarino’s first foray into Rochester.
Vojvodic says he was unaware of Savarino’s issues until recently, attributing the split to the scaling back and phasing of the project.
“With everything that's going on with Sam's firm, I really feel bad for him,” Vojvodic said. “And the project really wouldn't be where it is, my project wouldn't be where it is if it wasn't for him.”
Vajvodic’s project portfolio includes several renovations of properties in the Corn Hill neighborhood.
“Never, never, never of this size,” he said. "But, you know, bite by bite, piece by piece, the bank ... took a chance with me and we have a construction loan in place all closed. We're full-steam ahead.”
