As a series of long-anticipated developments start to breathe new life into downtown Monterey – most recently a Nov. 3 groundbreaking at 459 Alvarado St., where the T.A. Work Building burned down in 2007 – there’s an optimism among business owners that hasn’t been seen in years.
“[The groundbreaking] really signaled a renaissance of old Monterey,” says Rick Johnson, president of the Old Monterey Business Association. “The Great Recession has ended, and we are entering a period of great development.”
But just next to the site of last week’s celebration, the former Monterey Savings and Loan building at 449 Alvarado suggests that victory for downtown can’t be declared just yet: The nearly 20,000-square-foot building, owned for 14 years by local businessman Nader Agha, is occupied solely by Agha’s Coin & Treasure Shoppe. It remains a mostly dark, vacant fixture on a street starting to get some bustle back.
That too, is soon about to change: After years-long negotiations with San Diego-based Ashford University to take over the space fell through earlier this year, Agha is putting the old bank building on the market. An online auction is tentatively set for early January.
“When you put a property on the market online, you get buyers from all over the country and the world. That will give you a chance to test the market,” says Agha, who’s hoping to sell the building for at least $2.6 million.
If the auction doesn’t yield any buyers, Agha has other options on the table: He says he’s been talking to a Santa Cruz County-based restaurant (it does upward of $5 million in business a year, but Agha declined reveal the name) about potentially leasing the massive space.
Agha might also choose to develop the property himself, building a mixed-use project around the existing structure with about 20 apartments and more commercial space.
“It doesn’t make any sense to take the building down. We like the location, we like the building,” he says. “I’m looking at possibly breaking it up into a small plaza, with things like a hair salon, a make-up place and an organic fruit market.”
Agha hopes to firm up his plans soon, but the property has fallen down on his list of priorities of late. “I’ve just been so damn busy with other things,” he says.
Among those other things: auctioning off Pacific Grove’s historic Holman Building, which he’s owned since 1995, in an online auction that will run Dec. 3-6.
The potential sale comes after years of failed attempts by Agha to develop the site.
“I am not interested in wasting too much time in my life over stressful situations not leading to anything,” he says. “It’s left a very bad taste.”
Agha has also found himself in court these past weeks: His company, HMBY LP, sued the city of Soledad and the case went to trial Nov. 4.
Agha claims he made an agreement with the city in 2007 in which he advanced $750,000 for the expansion of a sewer plant that would provide his planned affordable housing development in the city with sewer hookups.
But Agha claims that when Fred Ledesma was elected as Soledad’s mayor in 2010, the city reneged on the deal and he never got his money back.
“We are right, there’s no question,” Agha says. “The city owes me the money.”
Ledesma disagrees, and says that if a deal was made, it was done privately by city council members, which he finds troubling.
“Elected officials have no business making deals,” he says. “They’re supposed to direct staff.”