Rodano’s to move for project

WILKES-BARRE – By the start of the fall semester, King’s College students won’t be able to stroll across North Main Street to grab a bite to eat at Rodano’s restaurant.

Because the eatery favored by many students won’t be there.

Kinship Square, a non-profit organization designed to spur development in Wilkes-Barre, has an agreement to purchase the restaurant this summer for $600,000, Kinship Square board chairman David Selingo said.

Rodano’s, as well as the vacant and deteriorating Corcoran and MacIntosh properties, also on North Main Street near North Street, will be razed in late July so construction can begin on the North Main Street Gateway Project.

But Rodano’s is not going out of business. The restaurant will relocate to the site of the former Campus Square Billiards at 39 Public Square later this summer, owner Frank Rodano confirmed. An exact date for the restaurant’s move has not been determined yet.

The building’s acquisition is considered necessary to providing enough space to construct the project, which is the result of a partnership between a private development company, non-profit organizations and King’s College.

Radnor Property Group, a commercial development company from Wayne, is investing $19.5 million to construct a four-story 95,000-square-foot building at the corner of North Main and East Union streets. The building will combine apartments, classrooms, a daycare center and retail space.

“We believe this will promote additional development in the area and the city. I truly feel this is just the beginning of many good things to come,” said David Yeager, president of Radnor.

All the land for the three properties is owned by Kinship Square, but was formerly owned by CityVest, another non-profit agency supporting area revitalization.

Yeager’s company is leasing the land from Kinship Square in a long-term deal. King’s College will lease a significant portion of the building from Radnor for student housing and classroom space.

King’s College president, the Rev. Thomas O’Hara, said the project is in line with the $40 million in renovations the college has done in recent years to revitalize the neighborhood for student housing. The college purchased the Margarita Apartments on Main Street in 2001 to convert them into student apartments.

“By upgrading our campus, all along we felt we were strengthening Wilkes-Barre by being a crucial part of the revitalization of our beloved city,” O’Hara said.

“Our common efforts now take some blighted buildings, buildings that are beyond repair, buildings that have sadly been a scar to our neighborhood for way too long. With those buildings and addition of another property, we recreate this corner, this North Main Street gateway to our downtown. This corner will become a bright new spot for our neighborhood.”

The top three floors, or 69,000 square feet, of the building will become apartments for 165 King’s students. Most of the apartments will consist of four bedrooms, two bathrooms with shared living and kitchen areas.

Another 10,000 square feet of the new building will house King’s College’s Early Educational Program, which will be adjoined to a modern daycare center capable of caring for up to 154 children. The classroom space and 13,000-square-foot daycare facility will be on the first floor. This will be the college’s second daycare facility, which will be open to the public.

“You can learn certain things in the classroom. Other things you learn experientially while you are actually doing it,” O’Hara said.

The King’s/St. Mary’s Development Child Care Center on South Washington Street will still operate to serve the daycare needs of the community after the new facility opens. Construction will begin this summer, O’Hara said.

The final 3,000 square feet of the building is being set aside for retail space on the first floor.

The new building is expected to be ready to open next year, just in time for classes to start in August 2009.