Photo by Joanne Beck
While a wine bar and waste disposal company may seem as opposite as you can get for entrepreneurial pursuits, they each have qualified for a $20,000 Revolving Loan Fund grant and city leaders' encouragement as worthwhile endeavors in the city of Batavia.
City Council approved the grant requests from Jon Waggoner of Waggoner Holdings for building improvements at 41 Jackson St., which will be home to Shush Wine Bar, LLC, and to Jean Lucas of Enercon Systems Inc., doing business as Eco Waste Solutions at 109 Cedar St.
Eco Waste Solutions is a government contractor that converts waste to energy, especially in remote job locations where sewer systems and waste removal do not exist, City Manager Rachael Tabelski said during Monday’s council meeting at City Hall.
“Rather than burning waste or burying waste or disposing of it in other ways, they have advanced technology used by the military, natural resource companies and remote communities,” Tabelski said. “They have purchased a building on Cedar Street and would like to do exterior renovations. And I believe, Tammy, correct me if I'm wrong, this location is the U.S. headquarters for research, development, manufacturing and assembly.”
Batavia Development Corporation Director Tammy Hathaway revised that to say manufacturing is “actually done in Ohio,” and assembly is performed on Cedar Street. It’s a Canadian company with a CEO who lives in Hamilton.
“It's a very interesting story. The CEO was actually traveling with her and her husband with their muscle car to a car show in Syracuse. They stopped here in the City Centre when I was going to have lunch and fell in love with Batavia, so they drove around. This was two years ago when they found the site was released on Cedar Street; it was the old Verizon building. And a year later, started the motions to purchase the building,” Hathaway said. “They do have a contract with the Department of Defense, and the incinerators are used — soldiers cannot, but they have to dispose of their trash when they're deployed overseas. They were using jet fuel and it was giving a burn lung syndrome, and so this eliminates that.
“They're very interesting units to see. It's like the back of a box truck, a small delivery truck. They assemble into three components. You can put a tire on one side that comes out clean air on the other,” she said. “They also use it in expeditions. They have smaller units for expeditions, the Andes and different places, so that there's no trash (left behind).”
The company project is for $65,000 of renovations, Tabelski said, and CEO Jean Lucas requested a $20,000 from the city’s Revolving Loan Fund. The BDC reviewed and approved the request, which was now before council for a vote.
“I’d like to also add that this is a two-part project. This is for the exterior renovations,” Hathaway said. “They will have a project that will be for interior renovations as well that they will not apply for funding for.”
City Council President Eugene Jankowski Jr. added a point about the fund’s origins.
“I think that's the original intent of it, was to improve the outward appearance of various businesses and the storefronts,” he said, encouraging any council questions.
Councilman Bob Bialkowski asked if any of the manufacturing would be done on the premises, and Hathaway said that’s all done in Ohio. There are “research technicians and engineers; they’re putting it all together” here in Batavia, she said.
“There’s a lot of components on the inside,” Hathaway said, as Tabelski added, “and so higher-end jobs and more of the R&D high-end assembly; it’s here.”
The current staff is 10 to 12 people, and “they probably don’t really expect to have many more than that,” Hathaway said. One unit will be assembled on the inside of the building and tested outside at the rear, per the space available, she said, and to ensure that “everything is done absolutely to perfection.”
A key piece to an outside company being located here is that it has used local contractors since the beginning of the lease, she said.
“Anyone that they needed for fabricating, an electrician, they used all locals,” she said. “At one point, the CEO had logged 28 local companies from the city of Batavia and the surrounding area.”
The Batavian first wrote about Eco Waste Solutions being located at Cedar Street in August 2023 after speaking with an employee at the site and it soon after was awarded a $100,000 Empire State Development grant and $180,000 in excelsior jobs tax credits to manufacture its waste disposal systems as part of Gov. Kathy Hochul’s $27 million financial package.
The other project would also require an investment of $65,000 but is “a little bit different,” Hathaway said, in that it would involve more interior renovation, including a “rearrangement of where the kitchen was” at 41 Jackson St., which is the older, longtime Salvania’s Restaurant and the more recent Gilliana’s Diner.
The building has “received about a quarter of a million dollars of private investment thus far,” Tabelski said, and property owner Jon Waggoner of Waggoner Holdings has requested the $20,000 from the Revolving Loan Fund.
The renovations are in preparation for Shush Wine Bar LLC to move in and open by early next year, business manager Rob Credi said during a previous interview with The Batavian.
City Council approved both grants during a business meeting that followed.
