Developers breathe new life into Brewer–Young Mansion

Sept. 11, 2019 | Sarah Heinonen
sarah@thereminder.com

The recently-restored Brewer Young Mansion.
Reminder Publishing photos by Sarah Heinonen

LONGMEADOW – A decaying Victorian mansion has been given new life as an office building in Longmeadow.

Built by the family of a minister, the Brewer-Young House, was once home to state Sen. Edward Brewer and Mary Ida Young, the matriarch of a wealthy family. It has been since been restored and updated to accommodate businesses, a doctor’s office, and a co-working space, the first of its kind in Longmeadow.

What as the formal ballroom, where a piano would rise from the floor during social gatherings, now houses Vitae Wealth Management, financial advisors. The office of events planner Lindsay Maloni is in what was once the minister’s parlor. Two therapists and a licensed mental health counselor occupy the former butler’s pantry and kitchen, respectively, and the entire second floor is now the office of Baystate Medical Center surgeon Dr. Melissa Johnson.

“They’ve done a beautiful combination of restoration and updating,” said Melissa Buscemi, program director for Reboot, a national nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting Jewish heritage. “I like that we’re in the old dining room,” she said of Reboot’s new office space.

A transformation of this magnitude did not come easily, nor did it happen overnight, said Andrew Lam of Longmeadow Historic Preservation Partners, the trio of investors who saved the structure from deterioration and eventual demolition.

Lam, whose home is what used to be the carriage house, was heavily involved in the town’s Historical Commission and had been searching for a way to preserve the building.

“Every historical preservation society or benefactor I approached all realized it was too expensive to maintain,” Lam said.     That was when Lam partnered with Chris Orzulak and Henry Clement to buy the property and turn it into professional offices that would generate revenue to help sustain the building. Upkeep on the building would have been too expensive for a single family and, Lam said, turning it into a multi-family building would have destroyed the character.

Orzulak said he had a “similar vision to repurpose it.”

“I’ve always believed it was not a practical single-family home,” Orzulak said. The partners approached the town to rezone the property. Their effort was widely supported by the town and construction was begun in the spring of 2018.

Clement, a contractor with Innovative Building & Design, said that when the town approved the rezoning, “On the one hand, my heart leapt and on the other hand, I said uh-oh,” because he knew how much work there was to be done.

“The porches were rotting and threatened to fall. The inside had water damage from roof leaks. It was a terrible eyesore for the town because it is located prominently at the center of the historic green,” Lam said.

Much of the inside had to be restored, including the hand and block-painted wallpaper on the main floor, which was made by the Zuber company in France. The same company provided wallpaper for the White House. He said some decisions made during the restoration weren’t “financially smart,” but were made to preserve the integrity of the building.

 “If we lost it, we could never get it back,” Lam said.

In addition to fixing, painting, and cleaning the nearly 135-year-old structure, Lam said that the entire building had to be brought up to code, including plumbing, electrical, HVAC, and a sprinkler system. An elevator and wheelchair lift also had to be installed in the building to make it accessible.

Like Buscemi, most of the tenants in the building are residents in town.

“It was an added bonus. I think it’s a testament to how the whole town views it,” Orzulak said of the property.

Jason Pananos runs the co-working space, 734 Workspace, that spans the third floor of the mansion. It has small individual offices available for rent but also has open-area workstations.

“I’ve worked in co-working spaces before but I always wanted to have it set up the way I wanted it,” Pananos said. Based on word-of-mouth alone, the co-working space is 75 percent filled.

“I was afraid no one would show up and it would just be me,” Pananos said with a laugh. He wasn’t the only one taking a risk.

At a cost of $2 million for renovations, Lam said there were a lot of risks – “that it would be a money pit or that no one would locate their office here.” Luckily, the partners’ hard work paid off.

Lam described the property as a “centerpiece” of the town and said its loss would have been “tragic.” Now, “I have no doubt it will outlive me,” Lam said.

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