By Susan Elise Campbell
After a long wait, the Saratoga City Center’s 610-space downtown parking lot between Maple Avenue and High Rock is set to open.
Ryan McMahon, City Center executive director, recently took a drive through the entire garage, top to bottom, the first non-construction person to do so.
“It feels good to get this going,” he said.
At one time the convention and events venue was going to build a 750-space garage on its own, but after some years of negotiations and design changes, construction started in September 2019 in partnership with the City of Saratoga Springs.
“We have great partners in the city,” McMahon said. “All five commissioners voted unanimously before the last election. We could not do this without a strong community partnership.”
The grand opening was will take place at the end of October.

By Christine Graf
The Pavilion Grand Hotel at 30 Lake Ave. in Saratoga Springs plans to rebrand itself as Pavilion Grand Executive Apartments.
In doing so, they will offer 32 yearly rental units in addition to 16 extended-stay units.
The transition will take place on Nov. 1.
According to general manager Susanne Simpson, 30 Lake Ave. was originally built by Cohoes-based Prime Companies to house luxury condominiums. The company decided to change course before the project was completed, and they opened the property as a luxury boutique hotel in 2014.
“The hotel’s building was originally built as luxury condos, so the transition to an executive apartment concept has been an easy one for us,” she said.
Because it was not designed as a hotel, the Pavilion Grand’s units are much larger than conventional hotel rooms. The smallest is 600 square feet, almost twice the size of a standard hotel room. The largest—a penthouse—is larger than many single-family homes. It measures 2,200 square feet and has two bedrooms and 2.5 baths.

By Susan Elise Campbell
A retrospective of Putnam Market’s 25 years is a case study in how a business can evolve 180 degrees from the original concept and become a local brand.
The market now occupies a storefront at 431 Broadway since its construction in 2000. But it started five years earlier on Putnam Street. Owners Cathy Hamilton and her sister Gloria Griskowitz had envisioned a place where customers could buy fresh meats and seafood, deli meats and cheeses sliced to order, assorted produce and baked goods.
“We had sourced everything from a local bakery and caterer,” said Hamilton.
Six months later, the partners started making sandwiches. During year three, they hired their first chef to do the baking and food production in-house. A wine store with the store was opened in 1998.
“We became the place to go for specialty groceries in the Capital District,” Hamilton said. “But when Roohan Realty built the building we are in now and we became the first tenant, we dropped produce to focus on food. Today we are known primarily for the stuff we make, which is totally opposite from where we started.”

By Susan Elise Campbell
In the spring when salon owners were shuttering their shops and self-isolating because of COVID-19, Dakota McGivern and George Solevo were texting back and forth, joking at first, but soon realizing that “Saratoga needed a barbershop” and despite the pandemic, they were going to start one, said McGivern.
A few months later the co-owners had literally transformed the boiler room at Saratoga’s historic Arcade building into a speakeasy-style barbershop that combines old traditions with new products.
The Boiler Room Cut and Shave is located at 376 Broadway, but accessed around the corner by a Phila Street alley.
Said McGivern, a master barber, “We are very busy.”
McGivern had been cutting hair at Patsy’s Barber Shop in Albany for eight years when COVID-19 hit. Solevo was a loyal long-time customer who had come into town every week for a trim by McGivern, and they kept up friendly communications during quarantine.