Four developments underway at Sibley Square in Rochester

ROCHESTER, N.Y. (WROC) — Sibley Square, the 1.1 million square foot mixed-use development in a former department store, was vacant less than 10 years ago when WinnCompanies, based in Boston, bought it.

Their projects — including 190 businesses and hundreds of apartments — all fall within their vision of innovation, education, and incubation.

Once the next round of developments is completed by spring, Ken Greene, commercial development director of the Sibley Square project, says that 1,000 workers, residents, and shoppers will use the old mega-store daily.

“We wanted to leverage the history, the romance, and the emotions people have with this building, and figure out how we bring it into the next century,” he said.

Those four developments, totaling 100,00 sq. ft. are:

• UltraPhil, an antiseptic bottling prototype plant, on the first floor
• Haley & Aldrich an environmental engineering firm (moving from Henrietta) on the second floor
• SWBR, an architecture firm, on the fourth floor
• Bandwidth, a cloud-based communications company, on the fifth floor

But there’s more work to be done. Greene says there are 65,000 sq. ft. left to lease, which can be used for one business, or it can be subdivided.

“It’s (asking) do they fit what we’re trying to create here, are they part of the community, and do they fit within our silos of innovation, education, and incubation,” Greene said.

Many of these new offices have built-in storage, showers, and other amenities, alongside the Mercantile On Main, a grocery store, and more in the building.

“There aren’t a lot of opportunities in life to recreate a city block for a generation,” Greene said. “In some ways, that’s what we’re doing here… We’re taking what used to be a department store, that had a bakery, grocery store, fur store, clothing, and manufacturing, it was vertically integrated… And we’ve recreated it into a different kind of meeting place, with similar synergies for the next generation.”

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