This article was scraped from Rochester Subway. This is a blog about Rochester history and urbanism has not been published since 2017. The current owners are now publishing link spam which made me want to preserve this history.. The original article was published August 28, 2016 and can be found here.
![Never built Voyager Towers at the site of the award-winning RTS Bus Terminal [PHOTO: Rochester Democrat & Chronicle 8/15/1965]](https://www.rochestersubway.com/topics/wp-content/uploads/Voyager_Towers.jpg?ref=senseofplace.dev)
From local development to just plain news of the weird, here are your RocLinks for this past week...
Art!
I'm a huge and unabashed Wendell Castle
fan, and you should be too. I've never recovered from the first time I saw his 'Ghost Clock'
at the Renwick in DC. He has great work at the MAG too, if DC is too far to travel.
Get Saucy
We're nearly there.
Hopefully just a few more weeks until brunch can be the booze-filled release of our dreams. For people waking up before noon, that is. Anyone who sleeps in already got there years ago.
Made it this time
And finally, let it be known that I don't inform you of everything after the fact. Why here's
a festival happening in 2 weeks on 9/10. Last one of the season, so hop to it. * * *
As always, use the comments below as open discussion for anything in these links - or let us know if there's a topic you'd like to see us hit more aggressively in future RocLinks. Have a great weekend!
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PS -
Demolition of the old RKO Palace Theater property to make way for a 22-story apartment-motel-theater project is expected to get under way "in the next couple of weeks."
And, says Milton R Berfer Brighton, president of Voyager Tower Development Co., Inc., the building will be ready for occupancy "about two years from now."
Berger says construction will start as soon as the old building has been razed -- "we hope to be working on the foundations by the end of the year.'*
THE 22-STORY building actually will have 24 floors --two below-ground parking levels, a street level garage, a two-story mezzanine section, and twin 19-story towers.
One tower, at the Clinton Avenue end of the building, will contain 96 apartments: Studios and one- and two-bedroom units.
The other tower will house a 240-room motel with restaurant and cocktail lounge. The building also will include a health club with swimming pool and sauna (steam) baths; service shops for residents, and some office space.
The mezzanine level will include a plush 900-seat theater, which RKO will lease. A shopping arcade also is planned for the mezzanine level. A convention hall, capable of seating 1,200 persons at dinner, and smaller meeting rooms are planned.
COST of the project has been estimated at $6 million, including about $1 million for property acquisition and demolition of the old theater building.
Voyager Towers will be built on an L-shaped site in Clinton Avenue North, between Mortimer and Pleasant Streets.
Berger, head of the development company, also is president of Rochester Refrigerating Corp. Vice president and treasurer is Stephen C. Baytos, Youngstown, Ohio, motel and real estate man.
A small office building just north of the theater site is being used as an office by the development corporation during construction of the new building, and will be expanded and remodeled to blend with Voyager Towers.
(1965, August 15). 22-Floor Towers for Downtown Voyager Building. Democrat and Chronicle, p. H1.
