Neighbors and fellow developers praised Mark Ciborowski’s plans to reinvigorate Phenix Hall on Wednesday, framing it as a mighty upgrade that would further downtown Concord’s upswing.
“This is a grand, ambitious, lot-of-dollar-signs project… sometimes I think that the scope and scale of it is the point,” Jonathan Chorlian, a fellow downtown developer, told the city’s planning board. “I don’t think any of us have ever really tried to do something this monumental.”
The board fielded public comment about the development at its Wednesday meeting but postponed formal consideration and a hearing until February.
At its heart, the project aims to revive the historic Phenix Hall theater space perched above the Works Cafe and other shops. Doing so would require developers to create a large building next door with accessible facilities and a lobby reachable to visitors through a pedestrian bridge connecting the upper floors, according to Ciborowski.
The proposed building, the Phenix Block, would be an eight-floor layer cake of Main Street retail and office spaces, 36 apartments and a rooftop restaurant. Building there would entail tearing down both the former CVS building and the former E&P hotel, whose upper floors were damaged in a fire decades ago.
It’s an ambitious undertaking that would transform roughly 200 feet of Main Street’s core, and on Wednesday, the project’s neighbors praised Ciborowski’s drive to complete it despite its scale and likely gargantuan price tag.
They also noted Ciborowski’s mindfulness of them, his neighbors.
Sue McCoo, whose store, Hilltop Consignment Gallery, will have to relocate out of the E&P building if it is torn down, underlined her full-throated support for her current landlord’s plans. Both of the expected tear-downs, she said, are necessary.
“You don’t want to take old buildings down,” she said, “But, no offense, Mark is an old, frugal yankee. If he can pull something out of there and use it, he will.”
Project plans note that the copper sign atop the E&P building would be salvaged an installed in the finished project.
Jim Rosenberg, a partner at the Shaheen and Gordon law firm, whose Storrs Street office is “literally in the shadow of this building,” also complimented Ciborowski’s plans.
In particular, he said he was excited about the way the project would bring attention and foot traffic to Low Avenue, which runs parallell between Main and Storrs Streets, via a pedestrian walkway.
The owners of the neighboring downtown building, which houses Parlor Salon, among other shops, were initially worried about what demolition and a new, eight-story building would mean for their structure. But Joe and Theodora Conway complimented Ciborowski for accommodating their worries.
Last year, Ciborowski convinced city leaders to soften the rules around height maximums downtown to clear a path for his proposal to move forward. He still needs the planning board’s sign-off on the changes his plans would bring to the city skyline. He will also need the OK from city leaders to turn what is now Phenix Avenue, a short connector between Low Avenue and Main Street, into a pedestrian pathway.
There were some concerns, from members of both the board and the public, about details that will need to be ironed out by February, like uplighting on the building. In the meantime, strong regard for Ciborowski and his plan dominated the discussion.
“I don’t think Mark would ever do anything, even if it were in his extreme financial interest, if he didn’t think it was good for the downtown,” Chorlian said. “I think of Mark as sort of the good angel on the shoulder of all his fellow developers, reminding us to kind of keep that beacon in mind.”