Peruvian businessman Fernando Palazuelo has a reputation for redeveloping historic structures from Europe to South America.
He has converted abandoned buildings into art galleries and apartments in Spain. He is in the midst of resurrecting the ruins of the former Packard Plant in Detroit into a mixed-use development.
Now he plans to start doing the same in downtown Toledo.
Mr. Palazuelo said he is under contract to buy the century-old Commerce Paper Co. building on Ontario Street in the Warehouse District for redevelopment into 80 loft-style market-rate apartments.
In an interview Friday, Mr. Palazuelo, a Spanish-born developer who lives in Lima, Peru, said he was swept up with the building’s history and architectural design.
Among the elements that stood out to the developer in the red-shale brick and reinforced concrete structure were the windows, terra cotta sills, and other elements original to its opening nearly 105 years ago as a wholesale grocery warehouse.
VIDEO: Developer hopes to turn Commerce Paper Co. into apartments
“When I entered here the soul was still waiting for us — the soul of 1912,” he said Friday before a walking tour of the building with The Blade, a local contractor, and others. “The historic soul of the building is very helping for the future of the building.”
Ken Marciniak, a commercial real estate agent who is handling the sale of the 88,000-square-foot building for Craig Roberts, its owner, said the transfer is very close to being finalized.
A request for the zoning for the property to be changed from commercial to residential is on the Thursday agenda for the Toledo-Lucas County Plan Commission meeting.
Alfred Overmeyer, the owner of a wholesale grocery business, contracted with A. Bentley & Sons Co. to construct the warehouse. It opened in 1912 as a four-story building and expanded to eight stories in 1917.
It was designed by Mills, Rhine, Bellman & Nordhoff, a leading Toledo architectural firm in the early 20th century who was responsible for many landmarks, including the Toledo Club, Secor and Commodore Perry hotels, and the Berdan Building, a 1902 structure currently under renovation for a 75-unit apartment building.
Mr. Overmeyer and later his son, Harrison, who operated the Merchants and Manufacturer Co., owned the building until the mid-1960s, when it was purchased by the Roberts family.
Mr. Palazuelo bought the abandoned Packard Plant on Detroit’s east side for $405,000 at a foreclosure auction in 2013. Plans call for the 3.5 million-square-foot complex to be restored in four phases as a modern mixed-use commercial, residential, and cultural development.
He said he is looking at the Commerce Paper building as a restoration project to provide housing and as a job-creation tool.
“Our main goal is to preserve the architectural elements of the building. To preserve the building works fine in economic ways to bring income into the building,” he said. “I like to preserve the image of the building. It should not be modified from a historic standpoint.”
In the interview, he said he believes the same opportunities that led him to invest in Detroit three years ago exist in downtown Toledo. Both cities have similar backgrounds in auto manufacturing, strong industrial roots, and rich cultural institutions such as art museums.
“Toledo is more or less a little Detroit. They have the same DNA and more or less the same history, built with the same materials, and have buildings constructed in the same way,” he said.
Mr. Palazuelo said he could not provide the monetary investment that would be needed to renovate the Commerce Paper Co. property into apartments. He said subsidies and financial incentives, including the Ohio Historic Preservation Tax program, would be integral to financing the project.
Most of the apartments would be one-bedroom except for some two-bedroom units on the upper floors.
The developer said he plans to expand an attached one-story, 6,000-square-foot storage and loading dock building into garage parking for tenants.
He said he hopes to begin renovations in April or early May.
Mr. Palazuelo said he began exploring the warehouse property for apartment conversion after he toured the Willis Day building across the street about five months ago. However, he said the six-story warehouse lacked the “soul” he later found in the Commerce Paper Co. building.
“The soul of the building was killed years ago,” he said.
Contact Mark Reiter at: markreiter@theblade.com or 419-724-6199.
First Published February 4, 2017, 5:00 a.m.
