A vacant Elm Street property has changed hands. Elm Street Properties LLC sold the former Spaghetti Warehouse building at 141 Elm Street (officially 456 Michigan Avenue on property tax records) to Elm/Michigan Holdings LLC for $706,522 yesterday. According to the NYS Corporation and Business Entity Database, Elm/Michigan Holdings has a mailing address of 2760 Kenmore Avenue in Tonawanda where TM Montante Development has its offices.
The circa-1883 building has been home to a string of restaurants and bars beginning with Spaghetti Warehouse in 1988, Your Father's Mustache, Sweetwater's, and finally SensationZ which closed in 2004. The 43,500 square foot structure was formerly a lumber mill operated by E.M. Hager & Sons.
At least two developers had plans for the site in recent years, each involving a residential conversion. In 2010, Greenleaf & Co. teamed with former First Niagara Bank Chairman Paul J. Kolkmeyer to draw up plans to convert the building into 38 to 40 lofts. They had the building under contract but the partners split up before work could get started.
If TM Montante is indeed the buyer, it will be a homecoming of sorts. Thomas M. Montante's grandfather, Carmelo Montante, opened the first Broad Elm Tire Center a block away from the property in 1935. In 1974, Tom co-founded Uniland Development which developed much of the Elm/Oak corridor north of Clinton Street in the 1980s. Thomas left Uniland to form his own development company in 1997.
This is great news. The city seems ripe for redevelopment there. Shedding the shredded awnings will vastly improve the building's, and the neighborhood's, appearance. Do it now.