Rain came down in sheets Tuesday afternoon, but the show went on for a groundbreaking ceremony of a new residential and commercial building at the former Boyd Theatre site in downtown Bethlehem.
The Boyd Project, a 6-story mixed-use development featuring 205 apartments and ground floor space for commercial tenants, will bring new life to a highly-visible and long-blighted property at 30 W. Broad St.
The once-bustling theater shuttered in 2011 following weather damage, and the adjacent storefronts were condemned in 2015 due to further structural deterioration.
The property sat vacant for about 10 years before a wrecking ball demolished it in late winter.
- Ground was broken Tuesday on The Boyd Project, a 6-story building featuring apartments and commercial tenants, at the former Boyd Theatre site in Bethlehem
- The complex will feature more than 25,000 square feet of amenities, including a garage, pool, garden, gym, bike station, dog washing area and co-working space
- The project is expected to be complete in 16 months. If construction stays on schedule, some floors may be ready for tenants to move in by late 2023
“This is an amazing day for the city of Bethlehem,” Mayor J. William Reynolds said at the groundbreaking. “If you’ve been in Bethlehem for any amount of time, you know that our downtown area here, especially along this corridor on Broad Street, has been an area that we’ve been trying to drive investment. And we’ve been trying to drive people here – to live here, to shop here.”
Reynolds noted that the former Boyd Theatre site has for too long been a place “where the energy dies” in downtown Bethlehem, and he praised developer Plamen “Rocco” Ayvazov for investing in and helping bring vibrancy back to the area.
Ayvazov, chief executive officer of Monocacy General Contracting, and Don Wenner, founder and CEO of DLP Capital, purchased the 26-44 W. Broad St. in February 2021 and initially submitted plans to the city for a 13-story structure before scaling back the proposed development last fall.
“Back in the day, [the Boyd property] was kind of the crown jewel for the city. We’re hoping to do that again.”Plamen “Rocco” Ayvazov, chief executive officer, Monocacy General Contracting
The partners hope to complete the project in about 16 months. If construction stays on schedule, some floors may be finished and ready for tenants to move in by late next year.
“Back in the day, [the Boyd property] was kind of the crown jewel for the city,” Ayvazov said. “We’re hoping to do that again.”
Ayvazov and Wenner met about nine years ago, when Wenner expanded his real estate investment company to include lending services for other investors.
The pair has partnered together on hundreds of properties, from small, single-family homes to large, redevelopment ventures.
“When we went inside of [the Boyd Theatre], it was in really, really bad shape,” Wenner said. “It had a lot of rain coming in for quite some time. But I knew with Rocco’s dedication and effort that he’d bring this to reality. I couldn’t be more excited to partner with him, to be a part of revitalizing downtown Bethlehem.”
The Boyd Project will feature studio, one-bedroom and two-bedroom apartments, available in more than a dozen layouts. It also will feature more than 25,000 square feet of amenities, including a first-floor garage, pool, outdoor garden, gym, bike station, dog washing area and co-working space.
Staying true to the Boyd’s roots, the complex will feature a small, first-floor movie theatre for residents and community events, Ayvazov said. It also will feature the reuse of The Boyd’s signage above the entrance and on top of the building.
“We definitely wanted to keep the Boyd name alive,” Ayvazov said. “Back in the day, the movie theater was the place to be.”
Ayvazov, along with architect Franz Placke, of Bernardon, at a Bethlehem Planning Commission meeting in March, presented updated façade plans for The Boyd Project.
The team detailed its tripartite design, featuring a clearly defined based, middle and top.
“It’s a very long façade, and so we tried to break it down vertically as well to make it feel like less of a uniform mass that’s just hovering over the sidewalk,” Placke told the commission.
The structure’s first floor will comprise mostly glass windows, while the second floor will have a dark, fiber cement panelized system with decorative trim, Placke said.
The middle portion will be be brick – evoking an “industrial type of feel,” Placke added, with the top portion featuring board and batten siding.
The team’s facade plans further incorporate Bethlehem’s industrial heritage through structural steel accents and a mural of Bethlehem Steel’s iconic blast furnaces on the building’s side facing Wells Fargo bank.
“We really believe that the new design is a better fit for the city, for our city, and it’s fitting best with the buildings around [it],” Ayvazov told the planning commission.
Commission member Tom Barker commented that the look was “first-class,” while commission chairman Robert Melosky said he was “impressed.”
“I really think this kind of grasps that whole feel of that area of downtown along with what the city is all about – that industrial look, that traditional feel – that really will reinvent I believe that entire corridor of Broad,” Melosky said at the meeting.