ProMedica buys location that was site of restaurants for many years

The Monroe Street building purchased by ProMedica is site of the former Melting Pot Restaurant.

A building on Monroe Street in Sylvania that has housed various restaurants for the last 45 years has been sold to Toledo-based ProMedica. The health-care company plans to turn it into additional administrative offices.

The 5,300-square-foot building, located at 5839 Monroe near U.S. 23, most recently housed the Melting Pot restaurant, a fondue-style eatery that closed in November, 2011.

ProMedica purchased the building on Jan. 7 for $1.3 million from 5839 Monroe Associates LLC, an Ohio company created by Mainstreet Ventures, an Ann Arbor-based restaurant chain.

Mainstreet Ventures had bought the 1.6-acre site in 2002 to expand its Toledo-area restaurant operations. It opened Stixx, an Asian bistro in 2002, and closed the restaurant in 2006. Later that year it converted the building to Carson’s Steakhouse, which closed in 2007.

The Melting Pot took over the lease on the site and opened in 2008. It closed in 2011.

The one-story building began its life in 1967 as part of the Bill Knapp’s restaurant chain, serving up family fare for 35 years until the failing chain shut down its 29 remaining restaurants in August, 2002.

Jared Meade, a spokesman for ProMedica, said the health-care system liked the Monroe Street location because it is adjacent to a two-story, 45,000-square-foot office building at 5855 Monroe St. that ProMedica currently leases and uses to house the administrative operations of its physicians group. For now, ProMedica sees the building as useful for additional administrative office space. There are no plans to use it as a restaurant or food preparation facility, although it contains a commercial-grade kitchen, Mr. Meade said.

ProMedica, he said, is still in the planning stages of converting the building to suit its needs, but its parking lot could be useful right away as overflow parking for the building at 5855 Monroe.

“If we hold training or other things at the existing building, the parking space at the new site could be utilized,” Mr. Meade said.

“But for now we see it as additional administrative space or other uses as the need arises,” Mr. Meade added.

Contact Jon Chavez at: jchavez@theblade.com or 419-724-6128.