“It was always my dream to have a banquet hall,” said Jan, who came to the United States from Pakistan 27 years ago with a college degree in business. “But it was not in good condition one year ago.”
If it was not in good condition one year ago, the Grand Roosevelt Ballroom in Philipsburgh Hall in downtown Yonkers is in immeasurably better condition now. Jan invested about $100,000 to renovate the ballroom, which will be used as a catering hall, and to gut the former office space next door and build the restaurant that will seat about 25 to 30 people. The ballroom has a new floor, the kitchen and bathrooms have been redone and there have been other improvements as well. The restaurant will serve Chinese, Indian, Spanish and Pakistani food. The catering hall will be able to accommodate 400 people.
The hall was built in 1904 in the Beaux-Arts style. At one time it actually was a ballroom, with mahogany doors trimmed in gold. Teddy Roosevelt and Franklin D. Roosevelt visited the hall while in Yonkers, and so it was named the Roosevelt Ballroom. Clara Bow and Helen Hayes performed on its stage. But a little less than 100 years later, in 1997, as part of a poverty-stricken downtown, it was condemned. In 2001, it reopened as a building with apartments and rehearsal space for artists, but change did not come quickly enough, and that enterprise did not last. In June 2008, a caterer vacated the building, saying the neighborhood was scaring customers away.
And then came Jan, who had some experience in the food industry in the U.S. as assistant manager of the Hotel Holland. He also had run a Subway franchise on Bedford Park Boulevard in the Bronx near Lehman College and had run a Pakistani food catering business with a friend in Manhattan.
Jan is in this for the long haul, with a 10-year lease from Philipsburgh Hall Associates L.P., which was formed by the Greyston Foundation and St. John”™s Episcopal Church, which jointly own the building. And Yonkers is trying to help.
“He had a lot of cooperation from the city planning department, they agreed on the importance of getting a tenant on Hudson Street because nothing was going on there during the day,” said Shelley Weintraub, Greyston”™s vice president for real estate. “This site is an important link between the train station and Main Street, to get people moving up toward city hall. He got cooperation from the Parking Authority, they are allowing him to use the parking lot at Riverdale and Warburton for events after daytime hours. The city was intent on helping him get started and making sure he was successful.”
How does Jan feel about it? “The surrounding area is growing, there are new projects and they are uncovering the river. We hope to do business here. This is a great neighborhood.”
And it is a neighborhood without a space for big public events, said Steve Sansone, executive director of the Yonkers Downtown BID. He also said the city”™s homeless task force has been getting more people into housing. The caterer who left in 2008 mentioned the proximity of the Sharing Community across Hudson Street. That nonprofit organization provides services for the poor, ill and unemployed. It also operates a homeless shelter, soup kitchen and center for AIDS patients. Rob Zopf has been executive director of the Sharing Community for three years.
“There is much more activity downtown now than there was three years ago,” he said. “Other businesses and more people.”
