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A four-unit apartment house at 40 S. Main St. in Voorheesville was razed Wednesday, Sept. 14, 2022, as part of a three-property project to build a restaurant, parking lot and cafe.
A four-unit apartment house at 40 S. Main St. in Voorheesville was razed Wednesday, Sept. 14, 2022, as part of a three-property project to build a restaurant, parking lot and cafe.
A four-unit apartment house at 40 S. Main St. in Voorheesville was razed Wednesday, Sept. 14, 2022, as part of a three-property project to build a restaurant, parking lot and cafe.
VOORHEESVILLE — A four-unit apartment house was demolished Wednesday morning, the second of three structures in the village to be torn down to make way for a new restaurant and a cafe, both owned by the Saratoga Springs-based Business for Good foundation.
The white, Victorian-style building, at 40 S. Main St., is next to a former Stewart’s Shop that closed in 2019 and was later razed. The Stewart’s plot, at 42 S. Main, will be home to a 5,000-square-foot restaurant called Blackbirds Tavern; 40 S. Main will become the tavern’s parking lot. Across the street, a dentist’s office at 43 S. Main will be knocked down later this fall to make way for Blackbirds Bike Cafe.
The physical layouts, menus, hours and more are still months in the future, said Connie Frances Avila, chief brand officer for the foundation.
Regulatory matters and a long constriction window likely mean the tavern and cafe won’t open until fall 2023, but BFG is confident the Blackbirds projects will be realized, Avila said. Their name is a nod to the mascot of Voorheesville’s Clayton A. Bouton High School. Â
Business for Good was established by marketing entrepreneur Ed Mitzen and his wife, Lisa. After Ed Mitzen made a fortune in health care marketing with agencies including Fingerpaint in Saratoga, the Mitzens created the foundation in late 2020 with the intention of funding efforts toward achieving equity in education, housing instability and food insecurity. It also has brought under its nonprofit wing food businesses including Hattie’s Restaurant and The Bread Basket bakery, both in Saratoga, and Hattie’s Chicken Shack in Wilton. Supported by BFG, the companies were able to provide employees with raises and paid health insurance as well as return profits to the community. Hattie’s is also developing a second location, set for the former Lombardo’s Restaurant on lower Madison Avenue in downtown Albany and due to open in the first half of next year. The same business model will apply to the Blackbirds eateries.
The new ventures are part of a small dining boom in Voorheesville, a village of 2,800 residents 15 miles southwest of Albany that five years ago had no table-service restaurants and lacked anywhere to get an alcoholic beverage with a meal from 2017 until this past May. Late next year, after all of the projects are completed, including  a pizza-focused restaurant in the former Smith’s Tavern, aka Smitty’s, there should be more than 350 table, bar and counter seats for server-delivered food and drink where there once were none.
Steve Barnes has worked at the Times Union since 1996, served as arts editor for six years, and since 2005 has been a senior writer. He generally covers restaurants, food and the arts, and is the Times Union’s restaurant columnist and theater critic. Steve was also a journalism instructor at the University at Albany for 12 years. You can reach him at sb*****@ti********.com or 518-454-5489.
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