Vacancy rates still high downtown

Published: Sunday, 7/20/2014 - Updated: 17 hours ago

BY JON CHAVEZ BLADE BUSINESS WRITER

Free Rent, reads a sign in the window of the building at the corner of Superior and Adams Streets downtown. And every weekday afternoon, dozens of people head for the building at 502 Adams.

But few notice the sign, and none go there to rent space. Instead, they go seeking lunch at the first-floor Subway sandwich shop the buildings only tenant.

The rehab of the building was completed in 2006, 2007, and then we got Subway in. And that was it, said building owner Dino Sarris, a real estate investor from Chicago.

In 2011 Mr. Sarris began offering free rent, promising up to six months free depending on the length of lease a tenant signed.

We had a couple of convenience-store types call. One felt the rent was too high, the other was not qualified [to get a loan], Mr. Sarris said.

But other than that, there have been no offers to rent space in Mr. Sarris four-story, 16,000-square foot building, which is the only structure on the so-called Paramount block, where the old Paramount Theater once stood. It is directly across Superior Street from the Valentine Theatre.

Built in 1920, the building started as the National Bank of Toledo. It became known as the Bond Building when it was home to a mens clothing store by that name. The Bond Store competed with another menswear retailer, the B.R. Baker Co., which was directly across Adams Street.

The Bond Building later housed Davis Business College. In the 1980s it was a flower shop before going vacant and falling to the federal Resolution Trust Corp.

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Vacancy rates still high downtown