Let's get this part out of the way.
It has been a bumpy start for Foundry Social, an arcade/bar nestled in a former factory a few blocks northwest of Medina's square. The 30,000-square-foot entertainment establishment opened November 2019, adjoining an indoor go-karting track the property owners had launched four years earlier.
Gene Whaley, one of those owners, said while foot traffic is beginning to pick up after "a rough summer and fall," the venue is averaging about half the weekly guests it had pre-COVID. The space is large enough to operate without capacity limits for social distancing, and he said weekends are busy — albeit today's customers tend to come in groups of four to six rather than eight to 10.
"What we are really missing is the ability to have larger groups, things like corporate trainings or class reunions," Whaley explained. "We have an event room that holds 150 people, and it hasn't been used in almost a year."
Yet for him — or Medina economic development director Kimberly Marshall, for that matter — the pandemic can't diminish the success of turning a vacant eyesore into an attractive and thriving business.
"When we bought the building seven years ago, it was in pretty bad disrepair, barbed-wire fencing and concrete, and it was all boarded up," Whaley said. "We have transformed the site into something that adds to the neighborhood, and that is probably what we are most proud of."
Marshall put it more bluntly: "They took a blighted building and made something meaningful out of it."
Most recently the Henry Furnace Co., the 150,000-square-foot Foundry Street building dates back to the 1860s, according to Marshall, when it was first used to make iron kettles and skillets. Manufacturing activities there are believed to have ceased sometime before 1992, and the property was used primarily for warehousing until it was vacated in 2011.
That same year, Medina was awarded a $1 million Brownfields Assessment Grant — roughly $112,000 of which it earmarked for environmental studies at the Henry Furnace site. Marshall said the studies revealed a clean bill of health and paved the way for Whaley and partners Greg Cordray, Steve Madden and Brian Fontanella to acquire it at auction.
Medina County property records indicate the 2013 purchase price was $307,800. Whaley estimates the partnership spent about $5 million in renovations, opening High Voltage Karting in a 30,000-square-foot back section of the building in March 2015.
They spent another four and a half years planning and constructing Foundry Social, which Whaley describes as "an entertainment complex geared toward adults" with duckpin bowling, billiards, bocce, corn hole and 25 to 30 "old-school" video games such as Centipede and Galaga.
"Most arcades have games for kids; ours are games are for grown-ups," he said.
The owners most recently opened MAD Brewing Co., a lounge tucked inside Foundry Social with 24 beer taps. Some of those taps feature MAD's (which stands for Making A Difference) own craft line, which is brewed offsite, while others are occupied by rotating guest brewmasters.
"We're trying to find a mix of a bigger, more well-known regional brewer that maybe doesn't have a local footprint, some medium-sized ones and then also the home brewer who wants to give it a shot," Whaley said. "The point is to support other entrepreneurs."
Marshall said the Henry Furnace site's rebirth is part of a broader transformation in the surrounding neighborhood.
As a low-to-moderate income area, the ward benefited from a $300,000 Community Development Block Grant — money used for improvements to roads, sidewalks and waterlines, she said. The city also installed a splash pad and made other upgrades at nearby Ray Mellert Park, and an apartment owner in the neighborhood invested $2 million in updates to his property.
That progress, Marshall added, builds on recent redevelopment closer to Medina Square. The formerly vacant Chamber of Commerce on North Court Street site — now the Raymond Building — is home to a trio of retail businesses on the first floor and five upper-level apartments.
The once-condemned Farmers Exchange Building south of the square has emerged as a mixed-use property with a brewery in the basement, a restaurant, coffee shop and marketplace at ground level, and 16 apartments overhead.
And the city is poised to break ground on what is currently being called Liberty View, a $9.3 million, four-story development along West Liberty Street. It will include street-level storefronts and upper-level loft-style housing.
While Foundry Social falls outside of the city's 2014 strategic plan that Marshall credits with being the catalyst for these downtown developments, she said it does fit squarely into the larger vision of making underutilized industrial sites "much more viable."
"In that sense, they have been very successful," she said. "The owners have more space there and continue to look for opportunities that are a fit for what they are already doing, and they are community-minded — both of which are good things for Medina."
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February 27, 2021 at 04:00PM
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Foundry Social owners turn former industrial site in Medina into playground for grown-ups - Crain's Cleveland Business
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