Hotel developer purchases former Norwich Elks Club on Main Street

Building was most recently the Majestic Rose restaurant

Norwich — A Cromwell hotel developer purchased the former Elks Club building, more recently the Majestic Rose restaurant, at 352 Main St. on Wednesday and plans to complete renovations aborted several years ago to create a boutique hotel.

RCN Capital LLC, which took over ownership in 2016 of the vacant 1843 former mansion home of mill mogul John F. Slater, sold the building Wednesday to Ganesha Hospitality LLC for $400,000, according to land transaction records filed in the Norwich city clerk's office.

Developers Amit Maran and his uncle, Harry Patel, have been looking at the building for several months after they saw it listed on a website featuring business properties for sale, Maran said.

Former owner and developer Janny Lam, who had opened the Majestic Rose Karaoke Club there, had started renovations of the upper floors for a boutique hotel but never completed the project. Lam and her many downtown projects ran into financial difficulties and she either sold or lost properties to foreclosure.

Maran said he has been in the hospitality business and looked for a project that would be a unique boutique hotel, rather than a typical “cookie-cutter” chain franchise. He said he fell in love with Norwich, the growing downtown economy, the city's designated federal Opportunity Zone, and the prospective major recreation and commercial development by Mohegan Gaming & Entertainment at the former Norwich Hospital nearby in Preston was a bonus.

“This is an upcoming city,” Maran said. “There's a lot of potential to bring in more people, attract more tourists and more business.”

The proposal calls for 30 hotel rooms and a restaurant. Maran said Lam started renovating the second floor several years ago, with new

After a vote by the Board of Education earlier this year, students who would have attended Ledyard Center in the fall now will be reassigned to the other three elementary schools, including a newly expanded Gallup Hill School. All upcoming sixth-graders in town will now attend Ledyard Middle School, also newly expanded, in the fall. Staff and faculty also have been reallocated for the 2019-20 school year.