There’s a light-up Frosty the Snowman in one of the brand new windows installed at Toledo’s Pythian Castle, waving at passersby on Jefferson Avenue near Ontario Street.
He’s not the only one who is cheerful about the progress at the long-vacant historic structure.
Dave Ball, the developer who bought the 130-year-old castle from the Lucas County Land Bank in 2016, is nearly ready to begin marketing the restored space to potential tenants after several setbacks.
“This building is going to look better than it did when it was new,” he said Wednesday, adding he and his brother Dean Ball have taken care to recreate as much of the building’s original design while still incorporating modern upgrades.
The castle was built by the fraternal organization Knights of Pythias, which left in 1951 after selling the property to Greyhound Lines. The building has been vacant and deteriorating since 1974. At some point the roof caved in, taking five stories down with it.
The land bank acquired the ornate structure through a deed-in-lieu of foreclosure in 2013, and Mr. Ball then bought it for $300 and an agreement that he would use the nearly $275,000 the nonprofit gave him to replace the roof and stabilize the castle’s tower by November, 2019.
Mr. Ball missed the deadline, citing delays brought on by the amount of work it took to clear five stories of collapsed floors, but land bank officials gave him an extension. As part of the deal Mr. Ball agreed to put $25,000 in an escrow account the land bank would control if he missed his extended roof construction deadline, a safeguard that ended up not being necessary.
Now, the roof is on and water-tight, new windows have been installed, the electricity and heat are working, and you no longer have to watch where you step. The front stairway is being rebuilt, elevators will be installed early next year, and the last of the crumbling plaster inside is being removed to expose beautiful brick.
“It is a shell ready to go, and on the first day of the new year we are starting to market it for tenants,” Mr. Ball said.
He believes the building is perfect for offices, whether it’s one company or several that would occupy the five-story, 35,000-square-foot castle. But it could also be built out as a mixed-use site, with loft apartments on the top floors and retail or office space below.
Land bank officials had given Mr. Ball until Nov. 30 to get the building safe, nuisance-free, and ready to attract tenants, but because of the pandemic and the economic slowdown that came with it, they extended that agreement by nine months.
David Mann, the land bank’s president and chief executive, said he doesn’t believe Mr. Ball will need that long to fulfill his end of the agreement.
“They are close to meeting the land bank’s expectations for stabilizing the property, and we have extended their agreement as is only right during the emergency this year,” Mr. Mann said. “It’s an impressive building, and it will soon be back to life.”
Lindsay Webb, Lucas County’s treasurer and chairman of the land bank’s board, gave Mr. Ball credit for keeping the restoration moving along during the pandemic.
“This project is well-positioned to take advantage of the pent-up demand in downtown for mixed use development,” she said.
Mr. Ball believes that saving the historic structure, rather than tearing it down or allowing it to continue to sit derelict, was a smart move by the land bank because it helps build momentum on Jefferson Avenue, which connects the central business district to UpTown and the Old West End.
Cindy Kerr, vice president of operations at ConnecToledo, the downtown development corporation, agreed.
She pointed out the building just across Ontario Street on Jefferson Avenue is now being redeveloped into 18 apartments, set to open in mid-2021, and a bicycle lane down Jefferson will go in next year. She’s hopeful there will be more to come.
“You've got the new lofts coming, the Pythian coming, and retailers and restaurants might start looking at other spaces and asking themselves, ‘What could this become?’” she said.
Mr. Ball also owns about 150 parking spaces near the castle and the adjacent former Greyhound station. The city’s engineering department is set to move from One Lake Erie Center to the old bus station soon.
First Published December 23, 2020, 9:37 p.m.
