Buyer of Post-Star property explains their game plan

Chronicle Managing Editor Cathy DeDe writes: The Chronicle reached out to Cooper Properties, the investment group that bought the Post Star complex for $1.03 million in April, to learn more about their plans for the 5.4-acre property at Lawrence and Cooper Streets,

“We just started marketing the space. We’ve already had a couple of showings. There’s been some real interest,” said Tyler Fronte, a real estate broker and member of the Cooper Properties management team.

“We’re trying to make sure it’s the right tenant for the space and for the neighborhood.”

Mr. Fronte described Cooper Properties as one subset of an investor group based in Waterford — “two or three people” in real estate and development who discovered they have “like-minded goals,” and started purchasing properties to rehab over the last “15-plus” years.

“We look at properties that have deferred maintenance, invest back into them and bring them back up to life,” Mr. Fronte says.

Two recent projects in Troy included a warehouse re-do on Second Street, and Academy Lofts, an historic school building repurposed as apartments, “a full rehab from start to finish,” Mr. Front said.

“We like to rehab buildings and dress them up, versus disturbing ‘virgin’ land, we call it — to repurpose buildings, bring them back up to their best state, to build something that’s gonna last for a long period of time.”

Noting Eric Unkauf’s redeveloped Shirt Factory complex across Lawrence Street, Mr. Fronte said they aim for “synergy between between the two properties.”

“We know there’s a lot of creative businesses that we’re not even aware of that could be looking for space, or they may have outgrown their space.

“We can subdivide for a variety of uses, potentially some heavier industry than the Shirt Factory currently houses,” he said. “We have a lot of flexibility and room for businesses to grow.

The Post Star property includes a little over 40,000 square feet of commercial space, Mr. Fronte said, including the newspaper’s former brick office building.

“The lion’s share is warehouses,” he says. “They could be any use — office, warehouse, retail. You can do a lot of different options, whether it’s a creative art space or ‘Flex’ office-warehouse combo.”

He said they plan to work with the existing buildings, rather than build new.

“We have the ability to, a la carte, carve it out how folks dream their space to be, like business incubators.

“There’s a pole barn in the back which could be a very cool space for entertainment, events or an outdoor market.”

“We’ve gotten calls from massive groups looking for large-scale, heavy industrial stuff, but we’re not looking to necessarily do that.

“We’re trying to blend with what was already created in that corridor.”

“The big things are, for the community, we don’t want to put something in that’s not going to fit there,” he said.

Cost per square foot is “market rate” Mr. Fronte said, declining specifics.

“It really ranges on how much space someone needs. I don’t want to quote a number. I will say we can be aggressive on pricing based on the space they need.”

Mr. Fronte says, “We are in the process of cleaning up some of the exterior buildings. There was some deferred maintenance that needed to be addressed. We continue to improve the property so it better blends with the community.”

For example, he said, “The landscape was severely overgrown. We trimmed that back, opened the space. The Post Star did the best they could cleaning it out, but there’s still a lot of debris left behind that we had to go through and clean up.

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