New York Real Estate Journal

Mojo Stumer awarded Manhasset retail renovation design

July 16, 2012 - Long Island
The town has many retail buildings, including the Americana, which is a well-known for its clothing and retail shops. The Americana is located on Northern Blvd., one of the busiest streets running through this town, and a little further west on Northern Blvd. is the location of a new renovation project by Mojo Stumer. The firm's competition is high in this area, so their renovation proposal had to be skillfully designed. The façade design incorporated a mixture of materials with pleasing proportions to catch a passerby's eye. Limestone panels highlight the north side of the building and wrap along the roofline. The second floor is synthetic wood for the practicality of exterior usage. The north end is an existing Sleepy's retail space, then a new retail space, and a new restaurant at the south end. The first story is a typical glass storefront and aluminum frames that will create consistency between the three different tenants. The main challenges of the project were outside of the building. Mojo Stumer had many different site plan schemes during the design phase. The client wanted to add parking spaces behind the building to improve the space. There is an existing hill behind the building that needed to be cut back in order to fit more parking spaces. Mojo Stumer's solution was to construct new retaining walls and shifting around some of the space. They needed to stabilize the square footage by removing an area where they could add spaces and moving the same area to a more convenient part of the site. The end result is a unique renovation and a more efficient site plan and circulation.