Hartshorn Centre offers office space in Muskegon
Pete Daly, Grand Rapids Business Journal
MUSKEGON — Ted Fricano really enjoys showing visitors through the Hartshorn Centre, his historic window-shade factory overlooking Muskegon Lake — especially a vacant office on the third floor at the front of the building that is fitted with an antique built-in vault.
The 60,000-square-foot concrete and steel Hartshorn Centre, built in 1885, now has about a dozen loft-style office and commercial suites on its four floors, ranging in size from 750 to 2,000 square feet. The exact footage of that office on the third floor is unknown, if you want to count the space inside the locked walk-in vault.
The door on the vault still shows faint remnants of its original ornate filigree. Stewart Hartshorn invented and patented the spring-roller window shade in the 19th century. In 1952, his former business became the Breneman-Hartshorn Co., which continued manufacturing window shades but left Muskegon in the early 1980s.
The vault door is locked tight and the chrome pin handle for opening it is gone.
"It hasn't been opened in years," said Fricano. "I like to think maybe there is a lost Monet in there," he said, grinning.
Fricano, 41, is a member of the Grand Haven Fricano family, well-known for many years for its thin-crust pizza sold in the family’s restaurants in Grand Haven, Grand Rapids, Holland and Kalamazoo. Fricano has operated his own pizza restaurant and bar — Fricano's on Muskegon Lake — in the Hartshorn Centre since May 2002.
On Feb. 12 of this year, Fricano became owner of the entire building.
According to Fricano, Bailey Group partners George Bailey and John Bultema II bought the old factory in 2001, after it had transitioned through phases as the Lumbertown Building and then the Waterfront Centre. They had previously suggested to him that he open a Fricano's in Muskegon.
"When I saw this (building), I knew it had a story," he said. Having been a factory for so long, he figured it had nostalgic value to many families in the community — just the right type of ambience for a laid-back local restaurant. Now, as owner of the building, he said he would like to restore much of the interior to the grandeur of an earlier period in Muskegon history, when factories were thriving and generations of the same family called the city home.
Although Fricano's on Muskegon Lake, a 300-seat restaurant, opened during the stalled economy following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Fricano said he believes the restaurant is "the most amazing success story in downtown Muskegon in probably 30 years."
"Our numbers are solid," he said, adding that he has not had to lay any employees off in the current economic troubles. One reason is that his restaurant business model is very simple and efficient: The restaurant serves only 12-inch pizzas — and a lot of them. He invested in 10 professional pizza ovens that enable his employee team to produce 90 pizzas every 20 minutes. The company that supplied the ovens, Bakers Pride, told him they had never sold that many ovens to one independent
restaurant before.
Fricano won't reveal what he paid for the Hartshorn Centre, which includes a total of 12 acres. (The city of Muskegon and its Hartshorn Marina own the strip on the waterfront behind the building.)
Bailey and Bultema had invested almost $2 million in new plumbing and electrical in Hartshorn Centre, he said. Then, about three years ago, they indicated they would be interested in selling it to Fricano, and eventually they started negotiations. As the deal was coming together, "I was caught right in the middle of this banking fiasco," said Fricano, but eventually he got financing from Fifth Third Bank.
Fricano said the building is not in a Renaissance Zone: "Across the street, you're in a Renaissance Zone. Here, you're not." So he was not eligible for tax credits to help finance the project. However, early on he was granted a Class C liquor license by the state of Michigan, which was a big help in successfully launching his restaurant in the building.
Although 70 percent of the building is currently leased, there is office space available on the first and third floors. Space is renting for about $10 per square foot, he said.
The entire fourth floor is leased by Hospice, and the office space with lake views on the third floor is leased. A large open office area on the second floor was previously a call center, but that company left. Now Fricano's priority is to turn that 10,000-square-foot space into a banquet facility seating up to 600. He said it could be catered by a number of companies in the area.
Fricano also plans to renovate a smaller space on the second floor into a smaller, private banquet room. Word leaked out lately that he might be opening a banquet hall, and he immediately started getting calls from potential customers.
But first, there's a lot of work to be done.
"This building has been reconfigured so many times," said Fricano.