More details about two ongoing projects that are bound to have a major impact on their respective business districts have been revealed.
During last Thursday’s Historic Preservation Commission meeting, developers and their representatives offered greater insight into what the Wellmont Theater in Montclair Center could look like in a couple of months. They also provided an early look at what could be coming for the building once occupied by The Olympic Shop.
After undergoing a major facelift, Olympic’s old home on Valley Road, a substantial vacant commercial site in the middle of the Upper Montclair Business District, could welcome anywhere from two to four new tenants on the first floor alone, its new owner said.
"I don’t who they are because I’m in limbo right now," Michael Pavel, of North Caldwell, told the commission. "I don’t know where this is going."
Pavel proposes to strip off the former clothing store’s brick façade, defined by small, round first-floor windows that one planning official likened to the portholes of a submarine.
In its place, he intends to put up a dual-personality façade. While the elements of the upper half of the building will reference the Tudor styling characteristic of the business district, the lower half of the building is expected to get a more modern treatment.
Along the roofline, three new gables will be constructed: a large central peak with multiple windows flanked on each side by a small gable with two windows.
Meanwhile, the "pedestrian-friendly" first floor is to have stained mahogany storefronts dominated by large windows. Canopies made of stainless steel and glass will overhang the doorways to the shops, Paul Sionas, the project architect, told the commission. Four entrances will line the Valley Road sidewalk, allowing for the maximum possible number of distinct retail spaces on the first floor.
The rear of the building will also see extensive changes, including the installation of a slightly below-grade brick plaza, which might serve as a spot for a restaurant’s outdoor dining, Sionas said.
As HPC members, some of whom are architects and developers themselves, continued to offer new ideas for redesigning the building, and as the plans underwent further revisions and Pavel looked forward to a third hearing, he asked the commission to be sensitive to his financial situation.
He said the building "is costing me $30,000 a month, and I can’t do anything with it until this is resolved."
HPC Chairman Edward Lippincott responded that the commission is taking its time and working with him to devise the best plan possible, since the community will be stuck with the result for a long time. "Long after you and I are gone," Lippincott said.
Pavel replied that, as a former Montclair resident for 27 years, he cares about the interests of the township and he’s "not your regular speculator."
He pledged to do "whatever it takes to do this building right and to make a statement."
After the meeting, Pavel declined to make additional remarks to The Times.
Earlier that evening, one of the architects handling the restoration of the Wellmont Theater at 5 Seymour St., slated to reopen at the end of October or in early November as a live music and performance venue, also appeared before the commission.
The Rosen Group, a Manhattan-based real estate development company, bought the theater about a year ago and is in the process of refurbishing it.
Michael Costantin, the architect-of-record for the project, said the building, dating to 1922, is one of the largest halls in the nation. Now that many of the remnants of the movie triplex that previously occupied the space have been removed, the view of the house from the stage is "completely awesome," Costantin told The Times. The interior is rife with ornamental plasterwork, with many of the surfaces decorated with relief sculptures.
Work crews are now in the process of transforming the floor, which angles downward toward the stage, into two tiers that descend to the orchestra level. That main floor could be rented out for banquets and other functions, or provide space for about 800 removable, reserved seats for shows, Costantin said. But, more frequently, that area will provide standing room for concerts, while about 1,000 fixed seats will be up in the balcony.
The architects are hoping they might be able to convert one of the rooms housing an 8-foot-high cast-iron fan, among the building’s original exhaust fans, into a VIP lounge, with the huge fan as its centerpiece.
The tenants of the revamped theater, who include Montclair resident and promoter Andy Feltz and the principals of the Bowery Presents, who own the Bowery Ballroom in New York City, have signed a 49-year lease for the theater. The exact dates of the first shows, and who the first acts will be, had not been established as of The Times’ deadline, but the lineup was expected to be announced soon.
