The Shawano Plan Commission on Tuesday recommended approval of a developer’s agreement between the city and an investors’ group looking to breathe new life into a long-dormant downtown building.
The group incorporated for the project as 153 SMS, LLC, after the building’s address of 153 S. Main St.
The property was purchased in 2001 by the Samanta Roy Institute of Science and Technology and languished vacant for years in spite of a sign in the window that promised a fabric store was “coming soon.” The building was put into receivership last year to help pay the debts of another SIST subsidiary.
The developer’s agreement, which goes before the Common Council for approval Wednesday, calls for 153 SMS to get a $100,000 low-interest, 10-year loan from the city to begin work on what will be a major renovation of the interior. The group will then get a $60,000 grant from tax incremental finance district funds once the property is ready for occupancy.
“The building is in pretty dire shape,” said Dennis Heling, chief economic development officer of Shawano County Economic Progress Inc., which worked with the investors’ group to put the deal together. “The roof leaks; has leaked for a number of years. The floors are buckled. The walls have been stripped down to the studs.”
In addition, he said, heating, plumbing and electrical work will all need to be redone.
“There’s going to be a substantial renovation,” he said.
Renovation to the exterior is also planned with the goal of capturing some of the building’s historic flavor. That would include restoring windows that had been bricked up by the previous owner, said Todd Schultz, representing the investors’ group.
Schultz said the building could provide for “a new economic model for business development that doesn’t exist up here.”
Schultz said no commercial bank was willing to loan “the exorbitant amount of money” that would be needed to make the property viable again, which made a partnership with the city necessary.
The property is located in a downtown TIF district.
“It’s a blighted building,” Heling said. “That’s what the TIF district was set up for.”
Schultz said he was impressed with downtown Shawano, despite the handful of vacant buildings.
“There’s a reason why there’s a handful of buildings that are vacant with common ownership, but everything else is vibrant downtown,” he said.
Schultz said many communities have unintentionally destroyed their downtowns by approving strip malls at the edge of town that ended up cannibalizing downtown businesses.
“You guys have managed to keep a very vibrant downtown,” he told the commission.
Schultz said he has already been in discussions with potential tenants, which include new business start-ups or business expansions.
“Part of the driver of this was to help spur some economic development and business mentoring in the area with the business service activities that we’re going to propose,” he said.
Schultz said renovation will have to begin before tenants are nailed down.
“It’s not in a condition that you can even take anyone into the building,” he said. “They would run out screaming.”
As currently proposed, the upstairs portion of the building would likely be office space, while the main floor could encompass multiple businesses in an “open-concept, shared business space.”
He said the idea would be for new start-ups to eventually outgrow the space and move into a permanent location elsewhere in the city and open up room for a new entrepreneur to take that space.
“We want to really create this dynamic of interaction with all of these new business activities, from video-chatting, videoconferencing, Internet cafe,” Schultz said.
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