В Скрантоне старинный склад автозапчастей преобразуют в жилые апартаменты

SCRANTON — A redevelopment of an early-1900s building into apartments reflects ongoing changes in the retail and residential landscapes in the city. A firm of developer Don Mammano bought the former D.G. Nicholas auto parts warehouse and store at 601-607 Wyoming Ave. at Olive Street in the fall for $1 million. Mammano recently began work to convert most of the building into about 35 apartments. He will keep a 3,000-square-foot commercial space in the street-level part of the building fronting on Wyoming Avenue that contained a Carquest Auto Parts location for many years. He also will create apartments on the rest of the first floor, on the entire second floor and in part of the above-ground basement along the sloping descent of Olive Street. “I do what I typically do” with such a redevelopment, Mammano said. “I had my team go in there and rip everything out to better assess the bones of the building.” The interior had a lot of metal shelving to come out and he found that brick tying back to the structure was failing and needed some significant restoration. “I wasn’t planning on doing that, but it’s part of the game when you’re buying buildings that are 100-plus years old,” Mammano said. “We’re really preserving it to its core.” Adaptive reuse Former industrial-use buildings often are attractive for adaptive reuse for various reasons. Mammano has been among a few prominent local developers who have been remaking old buildings throughout the city over the past 20 years. The D.G. Nicholas project is Mammano’s latest venture in the 600 and 500 blocks of Wyoming Avenue. In 2019, he converted a six-story former warehouse at 614 Wyoming Ave. into a mixed-use, apartment/commercial-office building called Miller Lofts. A few years later, Mammano purchased the 1923 Nicholas-Yeager building in the 500 block of Wyoming Ave., which was an earlier D.G. Nicholas location and later had various commercial occupants. After Mammano bought it, the Noteology and Olfactif custom perfumery and fragrances businesses moved in 2022 into the Nicholas-Yeager building. Mammano also had expressed interest in the D.G. Nicholas building at 601-607 Wyoming Ave. to Jim Nicholas, a third-generation member of the Nicholas family. Bygone era The building at 601-607 Wyoming Ave. dates to around 1917 and housed a variety of car dealers during its first three decades, including Ford, Sandone, Adair and Bloom, according to information that Mammano got from the Lackawanna Historical Society. In 1943, the building became home to the National Bag Corp, which made burlap and cotton bags. It was next an A&P grocer offices location from around 1950 until the late 1970s. D.G. Nicholas automotive parts bought 601-607 Wyoming Ave. in 1978 and it became the D.G. Nicholas Co. headquarters, offices and warehouse, with car, truck, tractor and foreign auto parts and paint and body shop supplies, as well as a machine shop and engine rebuilding. Over time, the automotive parts industry generally underwent major changes that led to the demise of such family-owned operations, much in the same way that other small mom-and-pop retail sectors were supplanted by larger economic forces and trends, Nicholas said. “There’s a lot of history; our family was in it for all those years,” the 75-year-old Nicholas said. “We both put in 50 years, my father and me, and that was fine. The timing was good for me to get out.” “I’m happy to see it going to another good use,” Nicholas said of 601-607 Wyoming Ave. “It was not something I could do at my age and really there’s no demand in town for industrial buildings anymore. I think he (Mammano) will do a good job” with the building. Meanwhile, Mammano last summer also bought the former Lettieri Auction & Appraisal building at 1148 Capouse Ave. He renovated that building at the corner of Walnut Street and last winter the Carquest Auto Parts store at 601-607 Wyoming Ave. moved to the Mammano-owned building at 1148 Capouse Ave. According to information from the Lackawanna Historical Society to Mammano: The building at 1148 Capouse Ave. dates to the mid-1920s and had numerous uses over the years, including Reese Motor Co., Pennsylvania Illuminating Co., Porto Rico Sales beverage dealers, Stephens Brothers dairy, Valley Vocational Schools, Stacor furniture manufacturers and Acme outerwear manufacturers.