About the Cataract Street Buildings
  1. Local Brewery staff proposed the project to North American Breweries (the parent organization that will fund it).
  2. The staff (some of whom have worked for the brewery for 30-plus years), with the help of outside engineers, architects and developers, assessed all three buildings with no bias toward a particular structure. The intent was to fully restore one building and create a destination for Genesee Beer.
  3. Assessments looked at the following:
    1. Structure and safety
    2. Layout of space
    3. Cost to rehabilitate old building
    4. Location/accessibility
  4. Based on the assessment, NAB chose to invest $2.6 million to develop the Genesee Brew House site in the old packaging center, a historic and abandoned building on Cataract Street that:
    1. is structurally sound
    2. has a wide open floor-plan, conducive to creating a museum, microbrewery, pub
    3. costs much less to restore compared to other brewery-owned buildings
    4. overlooks High Falls
  5. Once the Brewery chose to fully restore the packaging center, officials put the other buildings up for sale.
  6. More than a dozen developers toured and assessed the buildings with the hopes of purchasing them.
  7. Serious buyers concluded that the cost to rehabilitate the space was prohibitive.
  8. Just to stabilize the building at 13 Cataract would cost $2 million and then to restore the space and make it useable would cost an additional $5 to $8 million.
  9. The Genesee Brew House project hinges on the abandoned buildings being removed.
  10. The safety and liability concerns associated with the buildings create a dangerous environment for employees and visitors.
  11. The Genesee Brewery, is privately funded, and does not have additional resources available for restoration projects beyond the one $2.6 million identified.