WATERTOWN — If a downtown property owner got his way 20 years ago, Jefferson Community College’s education center would not be coming downtown because it would now be a parking lot.
But Michael A. Lumbis, the city’s planning and community development director, said those plans of demolishing that Franklin Street building were stopped in their tracks.
Now Neighbors of Watertown and JCC are partnering to invest about $3 million to create an education center and move the Small Business Development Center into the old Strand Theatre and five vacant storefronts in the Lamon building.
“There were a couple of times in the past that this building was going to be a parking lot,” Mr. Lumbis said Thursday morning during a tour of the project.
Members of Advantage Watertown, a group of business and community leaders who meet monthly to talk about city issues, got an update about its progress.
JCC will use $2.5 million in Downtown Revitalization Initiative funding toward the project.
The former Strand Theatre will be the centerpiece of the facility, with what JCC is now calling the Hub for Entrepreneurial Education occupying the old theater.
The Small Business Development Center will move from its current home at JCC and occupy about 900 square feet of space in one of the building’s storefronts.
Some of the other storefront space will become flexible co-worker office space for about eight fledgling businesses, where they can grow, said Megan A. Stadler, JCC’s associate vice president for strategic initiatives.
“I think there’s going to a real synergy there,” she said.
The college’s Small Business Development Center is now located at the JCC campus.
In the months ahead, the college will announce a more formal name for the entrepreneurial and education center, she said.
The building will feature original brick work, tin ceilings and glass walls to divide up offices. A mezzanine atrium will lead to a roof terrace, lounge and garden.
The college’s Small Business Development Center is now located at the JCC campus.
Donald W. Rutherford, CEO of the Watertown Local Development Corp., also known as the Watertown Trust, said the project is accomplishing the longtime goal of JCC having a downtown presence.
“It’s going to bring people to downtown. It’s going to bring jobs to downtown,” he said.
Calling it “a unique project” that will host different events, Advantage Watertown chair Jason F. White liked what he heard about it, saying that it will blend “the best of the new with the best of the old.”
While the college will utilize the theater’s mezzanine, JCC will share the ground floor with HarmoNNY Performing Arts Community, a local nonprofit group that promotes the arts in Northern New York, Neighbors executive director Reginald J. Schweitzer Jr. said Thursday.
Neighbors of Watertown is the general contractor for the project and will hire subcontractors to work on different aspects of the construction.
With interior demolition and asbestos removal already completed, construction is slated to start in the coming weeks,
Crawford & Stearns, architects and preservation planners based in Syracuse, is finishing up final design work, Mr. Schweitzer said.
He hopes the project will be completed in September 2023.
Neighbors purchased the old theater and storefronts last year from developer Jake Johnson.
The Strand was Watertown’s first theater to offer movies. It closed during the 1950s and then was used as a series of restaurants and bars.
Most recently, the building housed the Club Rio night club until it closed following a shooting outside the building in November 2018.
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