When the former Actor’s Colony burned down in a suspicious fire July 20, 2002, it took a piece of Naugatuck Valley history with it.
In the 1960s the place had been a hot spot nightclub where the likes of Tony Bennett, Tom Jones, Frankie Avalon, Sarah Vaughn and Jerry Vale entertained. The place was a landmark, known as much for its entertainment as its homemade tomato sauce.
Now, nearly nine years after the fire, the 1.33 acre property on Roosevelt Drive has risen from the ashes as a shopping center with its first tenant — a computer sales and repair shop called Tech Stop.
Tech Stop opened last month, and owner Robert Griffin, 34, is proud to say he remembers going to the Actor’s Colony when he was a school kid growing up in Orange, for sports banquets.
“I (received) my soccer trophies here, baseball too,” he said.
Griffin believes he has the right mix of ingredients for success because he will be open from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday through Thursday, available at times when commuters can stop in before or after work.
He’ll be selling computer equipment as well as repairing it in his 1,200 square-foot store. He loves the work.
“No two computer problems are alike,” Griffin said. “I love the troubleshooting.” Click here for the store’s website.
Tech Stop opened after the land sat undeveloped for years.
John Guedes, a partner in Housatonic Valley Realty, LLC, purchased the land in 2008 for $450,000 from another real estate holding company that held the property a few years after buying it from Lillian Pirritino, the Actor’s Colony owner since the 1960s.
It has been a struggle to get the place up and running, because of the economic doldrums and credit crunch, Guedes said. The center was completed about a year ago and has sat waiting for tenants.
But the center’s five storefronts could be filled out by July, Guedes said. He said he is in talks with merchants to lease the spaces but cannot name them at this time.
“The biggest problem we had, was we had a number of tenants lined up but the financial crisis hit at the time, and we would up losing them because they were not able to get financing,” Guedes said.
The new shopping center is called Actor’s Colony Center, appropriately.
It is in the middle of a stretch of residential housing along Route 34, where there is not much else in the way of strip malls — but one thing it has in spades is a lot of traffic.
Down the road, there is a Dunkin’ Donuts. The well-known Villa Bianca catering facility is also down the road — one of Seymour’s landmark business enterprises.
The rear of the property, which is not owned by the partnership, is home to Riverview BBQ. A seasonal produce market also used to be on the rear of the property, on the banks of the Housatonic River.
It’s not a bad location, if you ask merchants who are already set up there.
Richard Nichols, a longtime hot dog vendor down the road in Derby, believes the road has what it takes to bring commercial success.
“I think they can do it, because there’s a lot of traffic,” said Nichols, owner for the past 31 years of Nicholas Dog House, which operates out of a truck parked by the roadside.
Historically, the place got its name because vaudevillian performers camped at the site in the 1920s, when a bar and an ice cream shop sat on the lot, according to a 2003 article in the Connecticut Post.
Eventually the place became a catering hall. The fire that destroyed it was deemed suspicious, but arrests were never made because there was not enough evidence to get a warrant, said Seymour Fire Marshal Paul Wetowitz.
