— — Traffic again crept down Sweeney Street in North Tonawanda Tuesday afternoon minutes after a small ceremony was held to reopen the street as massive renovations continued at Remington Rand.

Cars and motorcycles rumbled over a new brick overlay, designer curbing and diagonal parking newly installed in the street, as a backdrop to a tour of the building led by developer Tony Kissling.

The developer was joined by various local and state officials including North Tonawanda Mayor Rob Ortt, state Sen. George Maziarz, R-Newfane, Niagara County Legislators Pete Smolinski, Russ Rizzo and city councilmen, among others.

“This is maybe not as impressive as the opening of the project but the reopening of Sweeney Street — I can tell you based on conversations that I’ve had, conversations at Canal Fest, that (residents) of North Tonawanda are going to be happy the street is opening,” Maziarz quipped, adding the project is  particularly important to him, since it is being built in his boyhood neighborhood.

But even the street boasts a new luster, with a brick paving design and landscaping elements connecting it to the canal park across the street and reflecting nicely the design at Gateway Harbor Park just down the street.

Kissling said six or seven years have passed since he first spoke with the likes of Maziarz (and former Mayor David Burgio) about turning the building into a live/work assembly of SOHO-style loft apartments. Since then almost all of the county’s development interests as well as state and federal funds drummed by NT’s Lumber City Development Corp. have become involved in the massive $30 million renovation which has three ground floor business tenants and an asset recovery firm ready to take the penthouse.

There is a lot of space left in the tremendous former typewriter factory that sat dormant for decades.

“The big focus is getting tenants in,” Kissling Interests LLC. Director of Development Tom Barrett said. “We’re going to button up the exterior of the building — our goal is to have that done before the inclement weather starts.”

Kissling said 107 workers were on site while dignitaries and construction managers in hard hats roamed two floors of the building amid throngs of workers on lifts, operating machines or installing electrical conduit, and that never are there fewer than 100 on site as work continues six days per week.

“We’re moving as fast as anybody could move,” Kissling said.

Sweeney Street was closed all summer as construction managers R&P Oak Hill installed new drainage and curbing around the property. While the restaurant portion was once expected to open next month, Kissling said a rooftop garden is a go, though his crews discovered about 10,000 feet of “bad” roofing that set the timeline back slightly in the interest of thoroughness.

“We want to make sure this thing is completely, 100 percent done correctly,” he said.

The group toured the front penthouse where metal framing now offers the first tangible glimpse of the live/work floor plan.

First Asset Recovery signed an agreement to lease the space last winter, and the company’s plans illustrate the versatility of the concept first invented to convert hundreds of old industrial buildings in southern Manhattan to versatile live/work spaces in recent decades.

“They have 13 employees. This will be mostly for offices but they have one or two rooms they can live in,” Kissling said. “Most of the plan is live/work. This is going to be mostly work.”

His daughter, Jennifer Kissling Ziegler, is an accomplished interior design expert who was on hand to explain the way the project will utilize natural light, movable partitions and what are called floating walls to ensure a multi-use space that also pays homage to the building’s industrial design.

Amid the fourth-floor matrix of shiny metal framing Ziegler, who has worked for the likes of Tiffany and Co., in New York, explained the concept in detail.

“We wanted them to be like SOHO lofts where the space is very useful, it can be used for work or for living,” she said.

In a space designated for kitchen use, a framed off cabinet structure is angled, functioning both as a wall separating the kitchen from common workspace as well as a structure for housing microwaves and counter space on the interior side. The large rectangular cabinet-like structure doesn’t go all the way to the ceiling, allowing light from the building’s huge windows to flow over it and into the interior of the floor plan.

Also, as Ziegler pointed out, the angled structure effectively separates areas of the room without use of doors — a major component of the design scheme.

“Everything’s flowing and open and versatile so they can decide how to use the space,” she said.

Just as important, she said, was developing floor plans that stay true to the former factory’s very nature — natural light and wide open — while repurposing it for a seemingly endless number of uses.

“It was very important to me to salvage what we could,” she said. “We didn’t hide any of the (old support columns), and they’ll play up in different colors.”

What excited her about the design potential at Rand, she said, was keeping an important piece of North Tonawanda’s industrial heritage recognizable while also providing a cutting-edge, versatile space that private tenants, business tenants and people off the street can enjoy equally.

“I feel like lots of people have family members who recall the building — some may have worked there. It’s giving back,” she said. “It has a whole story behind it and it’s great to be able to save it.”