Instead, Cohen is focusing on building another 50-plus apartment complex on a vacant lot on the north side of the 300 block of Main Street.
“The problem with that building, it’s a very, very, very difficult building to convert to something other than a municipal building, because it’s got enormous hallways, enormous lobbies,” Cohen said. “It’s just a very, very inefficient building, and it just doesn’t want to be divided up into a way that makes it usable.”
“We studied it,” he said. “We had three different architectural groups take a look at it, and we just couldn’t come up with anything that made sense for the building.”
“So I think office building or community building is kind of what it’s destined to be for a while,” Cohen said.
“It’s a beautiful building. It’s a great location, and we certainly gave it several tries, to try to figure a way around it, but if you think about the building, it has several different, very large, ornate lobbies that are really unusable space, and it’s got these big, wide hallways that are pretty unusable, so the building becomes incredibly inefficient to turn it into something other than that," he said. “It was designed, clearly, to be a municipal building.”
Cohen said he is impressed with how well Hamilton’s development has progressed despite the pandemic.
“The Marcum has stayed full through it, and I think the city’s done a remarkable job,” Cohen said.
About the Author
