Former Sabby's to be toy store, restaurant, apartments

November 3rd, 2021 | Story by Gordon Dritschilo | Originally Posted in the Rutland Herald

Andy Paluch and Logan Seely stand upstairs in the former Sabby’s building on Center Street. The building has been vacant almost 10 years and the duo plans to reopen it as a toy store, restaurant and apartments.

One of downtown’s longest vacancies is poised to end.

The former Sabby’s has a new owners who say they are ready to finish the seemingly unending renovations to the building and reopen it as a toy store, restaurant and two apartments.

“By the time I got here, it was already vacant,” said Downtown Rutland Partnership Executive Director Nikki Hindman. “It’s always been empty to me. I’ve only heard things.”

The Center Street restaurant went through a foreclosure in 2013 before Ron Amadeo bought it and started on repairs the following year. Work came to a sudden stop a few months later.

J.R. Bullock bought the building in 2018 and work began anew, but that effort also appeared to stall out.

Now Andy Paluch and Logan Seely have bought the building and are putting on the finishing touches.

“It was sort of a blank shell space,” Paluch said on Wednesday during a tour. “A lot of what we’re doing is converting it. It was set up to be an open, two-floor restaurant. We’re doing the work to convert it into the four spaces, which has turned out to be plenty of work.”

The couple plans to lease half of the downstairs to someone who will open a restaurant. Paluch said they are in talks with prospective tenants. In the other half, Seely will open Wild Kind Toys, selling “thoughtfully made toys that inspire creative play.”

“If you think about pretend playsets, pretend doctor kits, blocks and clothes for dress-up — toys that let children do a lot with them,” she said.

Seely, whose background is in teaching and childhood adversity research, said she has had trouble shopping for her nieces and her friends’ children in central Vermont, and has heard similar complaints from her friends who are mothers.

“I think there’s a general resurgence of people wanting to shop local,” she said.

Seely said she expects to start operating online late next week, and to open the storefront in early December.

Paluch said an effort to establish “destination retail” was a key part of the downtown strategic plan, and that he was excited to participate in the resurgence of downtown, noting that the building next door was poised to open as a plant shop.

“It’s great to see getting to a critical mass of retail on Center Street again,” he said. “I think we’re getting to the point where you can come down, have dinner and pop into some shops so you can have a whole evening experience on Center Street.”

The upstairs apartments, they said, would be a two-bedroom and a one-bedroom and should be ready by February. The front windows look across Center Street to the Paramount Theatre.

“We need housing in Rutland period right now,” Paluch said. “We need to create those housing options here if we want people to keep moving here.”

Several upstairs spaces in downtown buildings have been converted into housing in recent years, and she said she had heard tell of year-long waiting lists for downtown apartments. However, Hindman said she was not aware of any other new housing being developed downtown.

“I think those two apartments are a step in the right direction, and I hope other property owners will follow suit and add apartments,” she said.