NORWICH – More than twenty-one months after the commencement of rehabilitation on 24 East Main St., the once city-owned property has finally been closed on and buyer Chris Hayes, owner of Hayes Office Products, is planing to make use of the building by early to mid February.
The property has undergone extensive renovations since March, 2010 after the city received $200,000 in funds from the third round of the Restore New York Grant for the rehabilitation of the structure. While work on the property was originally scheduled for completion in June and work has taken longer than anticipated, the finished product has been worth the wait, according to city officials.
Hayes was the high bidder on the city-owned property last year and signed a sales contract with the city in September. He finally closed on the property Dec. 14 and according to him, only minor issues including the installation of a rain gutter and a ramp to make the building handicap accessible keep the building from total completion and prevent Hayes from obtaining an occupancy certificate. “There are only little quality issues to address just to meet specifications,” he added.
The upstairs of the newly renovated building has two high-efficiency, one bedroom apartments that will be rented out – hopefully to traveling business professionals seeking a short-term place to stay, said Hayes. “We’re hoping to work with local industries in temporarily housing some employees,” he said. Intentions are to make the downstairs retail space for Hayes Office Products’ commercial furniture sales, he added.
“The sale of office furniture is something we offered for a while,” said Hayes. “We already have some of the items we plan to sell, but some we waited to order because we wanted to wait until we closed on the property.”
For several weeks, Hayes has been marketing used furniture in his “almost free used furniture sale” to clear out inventory in preparations for the opening of his new division on East Main and at the same time, benefiting the Norwich Boys’ Basketball Boosters with all proceeds of the sale donated to the program. Currently, he is using warehouse space on 10 American Ave. to store some of his products, but when the shipments of new office furniture arrive, he said he plans to officially open the new extension of his business.
“A lot of what we do from this point depends on when the furniture arrives,” he explained, adding that it may be another six weeks before moving forward with his proposal.
Because of the local interest in the property, Hayes also said there is the possibility of hosting an open house in the near future. For now, he said, plans are to continue working with area industries to find potential tenants and waiting for new office furniture to arrive.