SYRACUSE, N.Y. -- After sitting vacant for almost 30 years, the old Goldberg’s furniture store in downtown Syracuse is about to reopen with a mix of apartments and commercial space.

Developer Tom Goodfellow, president of Goodfellow Construction Management Ltd., is turning the two-story building’s top floor into 26 efficiency and one-bedroom apartments and its first floor into commercial space.

The building at 476-480 S. Salina St. has been renamed the Whitlock building, a throwback to its original name, the Whitlock Memorial building.

The apartments feature granite counter tops and stainless-steel appliances. The 13 apartments in the rear of the building will share a laundry room. The 13 units in the front of the building will have their own washers and dryers. All tenants will have use of a roof-top deck.

Monthly rents will range from $875 to $1,600 and includes a parking space at the nearby trolley lot. Tenants will be responsible for paying their unit’s electric bills, which are expected to be below $50 a month. They will not have to worry about a gas bill because the building will be heated and cooled by a high-efficiency air source heat pump.

“We are the most energy efficient building in the city,” Goodfellow said.

The building has a new brick facade. Goodfellow said he expects to have the first 13 apartments -- all on the Clinton Street side of the building -- ready for occupancy at the end of February.

Syracuse Coworks, a nonprofit organization that rents inexpensive workspace to young professionals, is leasing commercial space on the first floor on the Clinton Street side of the building. Goodfellow said he is finalizing a lease with a retail tenant for 8,000 square feet of first-floor space on the South Salina Street side of the building.

He said he is having discussions with a potential tenant for an entertainment establishment in the building’s basement.

Constructed as a six-story retail and office building in 1895 by the Whitlock mercantile family, the upper floors suffered extensive fire damage in 1943. As a result, the top four floors of the building were demolished, leaving the building with just two floors.

Lorenzo’s Italian restaurant occupied the ground floor in the 1950s and 1960s. Goldberg Furniture acquired the building in the mid-1960s and operated a furniture store until June 1993.

The building has been vacant since Goldberg’s closed. It suffered a partial roof collapse in 2009 that resulted in extensive water damage.

In 2014, Goodfellow bought the building from the Greater Syracuse Land Bank for $5,000 and announced plans for its redevelopment. He said his plans got delayed by the need to remove an extensive amount of asbestos from the building and by the difficulty of obtaining financing.

“Every developer in town didn’t want anything to do with it,” he said.

The project is costing $3.5 million, including $500,000 for asbestos removal, he said.

The building is in an up-and-coming part of downtown:

Abutting it to the north, the upper floors of the historic Empire Building were transformed into 51 upscale apartments in 2018 at a cost of $10 million.

The $22 million Salt City Market food hall is under construction on the property abutting the Whitlock building to the south.

Diagonally across the street, the historic Hotel Syracuse reopened in 2016 as the Marriott Syracuse Downtown after a $76 million restoration.

Across Onondaga Street, the new owner of the landmark Chimes Building is planning to build out 100 more apartments in the structure’s vacant office space (a project Goodfellow is managing).

Rick Moriarty covers business news and consumer issues. Have a question or news tip? Contact him anytime: Email | Twitter | Facebook | 315-470-3148

Thanks for visiting Syracuse.com. Quality local journalism has never been more important, and your subscription matters. Not a subscriber yet? Please consider supporting our work.