This structure at 23-25 Lake Shore Drive East, or the old macaroni building as it’s called, was purchased in 2018 and will be seeing development into a doctor’s office and apartments. P-J file photo

DUNKIRK — Jolie Sasse has been at a standstill for sometime in trying to bring the old macaroni building back to usefulness. The building located at 23-25 Lake Shore Drive East in Dunkirk will be getting a makeover, it’s just going to have to cost less.

“When we went through the bidding process $3.8 million was the estimated price and we took it to the bank and the bank was not OK with that,” Sasse said at the Dunkirk Planning Board meeting Monday. “The amount of money that it’s going to cost versus the revenue that we can capture is not offsetting the costs and the bank doesn’t want to loan us the money. So the bank said that if we can get the costs down then they would loan us the money.”

Some of the money is being financed through grant funding and so time is ticking. As COVID-19 struck it put them even more behind as well as raised the prices on raw materials.

“We called on three additional architects to make adjustments to the building and try to come up with the most comprehensive, least expensive way to bring this to fruition without changing so much the design of the building,” Sasse shared. “The elevator is going to go in the existing shaft and rather than demolish all the concrete work around it and the existing building, we’re going to put the PT and the doctor’s office in the building and try to recoup more money on the full four-story building.”

The goal is to get the cost of the project down to $3 million, which the bank said it would approve.

In July of 2019 Sasse along with her husband Troy were approved for a mixed use doctor’s office and apartments project, the husband and wife are a medical doctor and physical therapist, respectively, and purchased the building in March 2018. Once completed there will be nine apartments in all along with the offices.