— — Renovations at the former Remington Rand building in North Tonawanda is progressing well, developers said Thursday, with workers last month completing an environmental cleanup of the site tied to Brownfield tax credits.

“That’s a huge accomplishment,” Director of Development Thomas Barrett said. “It’s coming along well.”

Other first phase initiatives have included progress on the first 18 apartment units in the building, to be dubbed the “Remington Lofts on the Canal” when the project, including four first-floor businesses, is completed.

The project has run into its share of technical hurdles despite historic cooperation among federal, state and local funding entities, but is still expected to be completely finished between August and October of this year, Barrett said.

The live/work lofts — about 81 are planned in total to be built throughout the former typewriter factory — are exactly what they sound like: chic, SOHO-style spaces complete with kitchens, bedrooms and office space that can be used to mix business and residential needs or any combination thereof.

In the massive building’s ground-floor lobby, a yoga studio called “Evolation Yoga,” Leon’s Studio One hair salon and a juice bar run by a company called “Liquid Energy”  are all targeted to open sometime in the spring.

It was recently dubbed by the state’s Canal Corp. as the largest private investment now moving forward along the length of the Erie Canal.

A restaurant will occupy the protruding front annex of the building, to open sometime this summer, he said. Though for the first time in the project’s years-long evolution, the restaurant that will debut there is now in question.

Scott and Virginia Rossi, of SJR Culinary Ventures, moved to Western New York from New Jersey in Summer 2008, taking over the City Grill in Buffalo where recently eight people were shot — four of them fatally — when a gunman opened fire outside the business.

Questions have since been raised about whether the Rossis will open a restaurant called “15-Mile” to anchor the canalside project. The Rossis could not be reached for comment.

Barrett declined to address those questions Thursday, saying: “The restaurant is going forward. We’ve got a restaurant going into that building, there’s not any doubt about that.”

The overall project is now expected to cost a grand total of about $25 million, up from an initial estimate of about $18 million. “Hard costs” related to the massive renovations now taking place to blend historic building preservation with ultra-modern design aspects, have also increased about $4 million since the project got underway a couple of years ago, to about $18 million.

In a first, First Niagara Bank, which holds the mortgage on the project, has agreed to buy the value of historic tax credits tied to the project, in turn allowing Kissling to raise cash to continue renovations.

“This is something that’s been in the works for some time but for them to actually step in and do it, I can’t even explain in words what it means,” Barrett said, adding such arrangements are not common among banks. “They’re showing a huge commitment to the project.”

For months, roughly 100 workers have been staffed at the Sweeney Street building each day, for about nine hours per day.