The Hour newspaper building at 346 Main Ave. in Norwalk is to become medical offices.
The $4 million-plus sale should be final within a month ”“ mid-August ”“ with a $2 million renovation to begin immediately thereafter, according to the involved parties.
Dr. Syed Reza, principal of the Primary Medical Care Center practice across the street from The Hour, is the buyer.
Reza intends to stock the refurbished and re-landscaped building with noncompeting medical specialty offices, including his own.
The space for Reza”™s practice could be completed by year”™s end. Reza hopes to see patients there beginning in January. Further improvements will continue thereafter.
The Hour is seeking another facility, but will have six months beyond the closing to remain on site.
The Hour”™s Chief Operating Officer and Publisher Chet Valiante said he has already looked at about “15 or 16” properties, several of which are promising.
The Hour building was built in the 1960s to be a supermarket. It remains brown and bland, fronted by loading docks and a treeless parking lot. The Norwalk Zoning Commission has signed off on Reza”™s proposed upgrades, including substantial exterior work. Reza said the sale was contingent on city zoning approval, which he received in June.
Valiante said the move would see the paper remain within its 139-year-old bailiwick. Its 19th-century roots were in Westport before becoming The Norwalk Hour and then simply The Hour. Circulation is 15,000.
“It started when we outsourced our printing, which was about two years ago,” Valiante said of the move. “I”™d say at least 40 percent of the building was comprised of the presses and the mailroom operation, which has been sitting just vacant.”
The building has 38,000 square feet, with several thousand of those square feet part of an attached addition.
Reza foresees an “under one roof” gathering of disparate medical offices from the region that currently operate from storefronts, as his does, or from home offices scattered across the region. Another potential tenant might be a specialist “like a hand surgeon” who is primarily hospital based, but who wants a centralized office.
“It makes sense,” Reza said. “For example, there is a physical therapy business next door to me here (Premier Physical Therapy). I have no relationship with them, but if I prescribe physical therapy, I know that some of my patients simply walk next door for treatment.”
Reza, 51, foresees about 32,000 square feet of medical offices. Parking restrictions will keep him from converting all of the additional space to offices. “It might be more beneficial to create a storage section, rather than a garage there,” he said.
“I”™m an urgent-care, primary-care center and I”™ll be in the front,” he said. He has city approval for 32,000 square feet of multispecialty medical space, including, perhaps, a dentist”™s office.
Primary Medical Care Center employs nine, four of whom are doctors. His facility is currently 3,200 square feet. After the move: “We hope to make it slightly larger, maybe add a physician assistant, and have a more efficient office that”™s divided, where primary care is on one side and urgent care on the other. We can see patients much more efficiently and see more in a day than we do now.”
“I don”™t see any downside,” Valiante said. “It”™s really a win-win situation both for us. And he”™s already indicated to me he has doctor friends who are interested.”
