Deal in place
Move expected to lift the fortunes of Albany’s South End
Lombardo’s Restaurant, a longtime city landmark and mainstay of the lower Madison Avenue area, is being sold.
Lombardo’s Restaurant, a longtime city landmark and mainstay of the lower Madison Avenue area, is being sold.
Sale of the 9,500-square-foot facility is set for April, said Leah Witko, the agent with Coldwell Banker who represented the seller, Paul Mancino.
The deal is set to close in April.
“It’s great for the block and great for the city,” Witko said, adding that the development should be a big boost to the fortunes of the surrounding neighborhood.
“It really was the anchor of that end of Madison Avenue. With a hole there it was not good,” she said.
Lombardo’s closed at the end of 2018 after operating in that spot since 1919.
The buyers, she added were particularly attracted to the kitchen, which would also allow the facility to continue offering dining. “That was an attractive part of the deal … it’s a fairly elaborate kitchen.”
Other selling points included a copious parking lot and four rental apartments upstairs.
With a tall neon sign outside and white-tiled floor and tin roof inside, Lombardo’s long evoked a past era, when the surrounding area was known as Little Italy and when local and statewide politicians would saunter over from the Capitol, a few blocks up the hills, to eat, schmooze, and consume multi-course Italian meals.
The restaurant was operated by the Lombardo family until 1991, when they sold it to Paul and Rose-marie Mancino, a retired Albany police detective and registered nurse, respectively.
Ford Motor Co. has backed out on a contract promise to invest $900 million at an assembly plant outside Cleveland for an unnamed product line that instead will be produced in Mexico, United Auto Workers officials said.
“We 100 percent reject the company’s decision to put corporate greed and more potential profits over American jobs and the future of our members,”
UAW Vice President and Director Gerald Kariem said in a letter to union members last week.
Ford’s promised investment at the Ohio Assembly Plant in Avon Lake was made during 2019 contract negotiations. The plant has around 1,700 hourly workers producing Ford Eseries vans and Super Duty pickup trucks. Kariem said UAW has asked Ford officials to explain the decision but received limited information so far.