01-18-2015, 03:30 PM
(12-15-2014, 04:51 PM)panamaniac Wrote: There was a Record article about the upper floors of that section of the building being converted into offices, but it was pretty vague about what would happen on the ground floor. I don't recall anything about the bar being closed. The Cash Store corner would make a good retail space or coffee shop, I would think.The article tells us that Revel Development was the company behind the transformation of this building. I emailed Revel months ago for an update on the project but never received a response.
Revival planned for Kitchener’s oldest downtown building
May 29, 2014 | Brent Davis | The Record | LINK
Quote:KITCHENER – New life is being breathed into the oldest surviving building in Kitchener's downtown core.
The Revel Development Corp. recently purchased part of the American Block, which has stood at the corner of King and Queen streets since the early 1860s.
The portion purchased by Revel is currently home to three street-level businesses – The Cash Store on the corner, and Civilian Printing and Caper's Sports Bar on Queen Street. The two upper floors are now vacant and are being transformed into office space for high-tech tenants.
"It's got that very utilitarian architecture," said Revel president Stephen Litt. "It's not fancy."
But it's got history in spades.
"It was one of the anchors of the main corner in the city," historian Rych Mills said.
The American Block was built in the early 1860s – some accounts date its opening to 1862 – by the Breithaupt family to house offices for its tannery and other endeavours.
For more than a century, into the 1960s at least, it also housed the American Hotel, which largely catered to business travelers and commercial salespeople.
The hotel featured sample rooms, where the traveling salesmen could show their goods to prospective clients. It stood across the intersection from a small inn that occupied the corner where the Walper Hotel, established in 1893, now stands.
"It's been a mainstay," Litt said, adding he wanted to bring back that entrepreneurial spirit to the building by providing a home to high-tech startups and unique boutique storefronts.
Workers have already taken out interior partition walls upstairs and have removed false ceilings, providing 14-foot ceilings for each of the two upper floors.
"We've exposed all the original interior structure," Litt said. They're doing some structural reinforcement work, and they're retrofitting an elevator.
They also plan to create a rooftop patio on the third floor, and a second-floor terrace. Revel's building totals about 20,000 square feet.
Litt said he should be able to show the upper-floor space to prospective tenants next week. He's using part of the property to host a party for the CAFKA art festival on Saturday.
Litt is hoping to take advantage of a new city program that will help downtown property owners fix up underused upper-storey space for new startup companies.
Eligible owners could receive up to $20,000 in matching funds for renovations per floor, and up to $40,000 in matching funds for accessibility improvements like elevators in common areas.
At street level, Litt would ultimately like to see a number of small boutique retailers or restaurants – perhaps an extension of what's occurring on the nearby Duke Street food block.
"That's kind of the feel we're going for, for this block," he said.
Most of the work planned for the building is interior, although Litt plans to put as many windows as he can at ground level along the Queen Street side.
So where did the American moniker come from?
It could simply be because the Breithaupt family moved here from Buffalo, Mills said. It could also have reflected the travelling nature of the clientele that patronized the hotel.
But there was also something about America itself that captivated the imagination, Mills said.
"America was still representative, even to people in Canada, of something great," he said.
"America represented probably the ideal. Canada was not even a country yet. It was sort of a magic name."