Troppe gets Hands on another Downtown Akron Building --- "Thank Goodness!"

LANDMARK RESCUED

Tony Troppe renovating historic Kaiser Building for use as cafe, offices across from Canal Park



By Betty Lin-Fisher
Beacon Journal staff writer

Photo credits (Ed Suba Jr./Akron Beacon Journal)


A downtown Akron building whose last owner lost it to foreclosure after a failed attempt to sell it on eBay is getting new life under the eye of historic building renovator Tony Troppe.

Plans call for the Kaiser Building, across from Canal Park on South Main Street, to have a cafe or store in two slots on the first floor, offices on the second floor and a mix of offices and loft apartments on the third floor.

''I did not like that vacancy across the street from the ballpark,'' said Troppe, who has renovated several historical buildings in downtown Akron. ''I felt for some time that a building of that stature should be brought back.''

Troppe said he wants to create ''a positive node of knowledge workers,'' referring to downtown workers and students who soon will be living at the 22 Exchange Place project a few hundred feet away. He believes they will be looking for places to hang out, eat and work.

The building, believed to have been built in 1877, formerly housed a German-American Family Club and had a grand ballroom on the third floor with 18-foot-high ceilings.

Troppe envisions a world-cafe type of eatery on part of the main floor, with coffee, beer, food and live music. He also wants to create an outdoor eating area on a brick patio to the side or possibly a drive-through window. Troppe said he is in discussions with potential tenants and might run the cafe on his own, similar to Mocha Maiden on Maiden Lane off East Market Street.

Troppe, with private investors under the name Kaiser Hall Revival Group, bought the building from the mortgage lender after a sheriff's sale for $365,000, according to public records. They have financed the project through Portage Community Bank.

The building's previous owner, Jeremy Caudill and his company, JJC Investors Inc., had purchased it in 2005 for $650,000. But Caudill was unable to renovate the building or sell it, including an unsuccessful listing on eBay, before losing it to foreclosure for delinquent taxes and back payments to the lender.

The building, at 323 and 325 S. Main St., needed a lot of internal demolition, Troppe said. Crews began in March, and Troppe hopes to have the first floor done and open for business by fall.

FOR COMPLETE ARTICLE, CLICK HERE <-----

Why Does Your Devalued Property Have Such a High Tax Rate?

By PAIGE BOWERS / ATLANTA – Sun Jan 11, 9:55 pm ET



Are your property taxes rising while the value of your property falls? Join the multitudes of Americans in the same predicament. In Atlanta, property values have tumbled over the past year by as much as 12% but an Atlanta Neighborhood Development Partnership study of high foreclosure areas found that the owners of those properties would have had to pay an extra $70 million in taxes because of overvalued but official appraisals. In states from New York to Arizona, angry citizen groups are lobbying their state legislatures - already facing budget shortfalls themselves - to address the discrepancies.

Tax assessors across the country have seen an uptick in the number of property owners challenging their propertys' appraisal value. The Wall Street Journal reported that 15,000 residents - instead of the usual 500 - in St. Tammany Parish, Louisiana had requested a review of their 2008 tax bills. And the Cleveland Plain Dealer reported that Cuyahoga County, which has about 1,300 foreclosures a month, saw three times as many appeals as in 2007.

Atlanta attorney Edward Lindsey says he saw the writing on the wall when he first ran for state representative in 2004. As he went door to door canvassing for votes in one of the city's wealthier enclaves, countless residents told him of paying property taxes that didn't reflect the true value of their property, but a value fueled by an assessment of their neighbor's recent renovation. Lindsey may have felt a little guilty. He and his wife had just completed what he described as "an upgrade" - he tore down one house and replaced it with a larger one - to the property they had lived on for the past 20 years. "It's not fair for [my neighbors] to have their property reassessed because of the renovations we've done," says Lindsey, a Republican legislator since 2005. "Property taxes should be focused on what you invested in the property rather than the unrealized gain, which is subject to wild variations."

For Full Article...
Click Here
http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/20090112/us_time/08599187070100