PAETEC Headquarters was a building proposed and approved for construction in
Rochester, New York. It was to serve as the new headquarters for the Rochester-based telecommunications company,
PAETEC Holding Corp.
PAETEC Holding Corporation was a Fortune 1000 telecommunications company headquartered in Perinton, New York, United States. It was founded as the private company PaeTec Communications, Inc. in 1998 by Arunas A. Chesonis. In 2007 it merged wi ...
Its original proposed height was 40 floors, with a LEED-certified rooftop garden and was originally slated for completion in 2012. The proposed PAETEC building would have sat on the southeast corner of the intersection of Main Street and Clinton Avenue, taking advantage of both the refreshed (abated) skeletal structure of the former Seneca Building and adjacency to an enormous underground parking facility (1600+spaces) and truck tunnel. In addition to reusing the Seneca structure, PAETEC revealed plans at an RDDC luncheon in June 2010 that detailed the construction of a semi-transparent NOC on the north side of the building with viewing lines for pedestrians into its command center, additional office space on the south side of the structure, as well as retail on the first floor.
The new downtown headquarters for PAETEC was to be part of a redevelopment plan, with the state of New York using a $40 million state grant to clear the Midtown site.
Midtown Plaza
It was announced on October 16, 2007 that
Midtown Plaza will be knocked down to make way for the new
PAETEC headquarters via
eminent domain. Midtown Plaza was the first urban indoor mall in the United States.
[Midtown to be demolished; Paetec HQ to rise on sit]
Rochester Business Journal
Fate
With the economic recession of 2008–2009, PAETEC scaled down their plans significantly, first to a much smaller new building, and then to a simple re-use of the existing Seneca Building. With PAETEC's acquisition by
Windstream Communications, the new plan involved only two-thirds of the Seneca Building; the city then began considering options for the corner parcel on which the Tower would have been built. The corner was sold to Pike Construction who built a new headquarters for the
Democrat and Chronicle
The ''Democrat and Chronicle'' is a daily newspaper serving the greater Rochester, New York, area. At 245 East Main Street in downtown Rochester, the ''Democrat and Chronicle'' operates under the ownership of Gannett. The paper's production fa ...
on the site. The building, completed in 2016 is three stories like the current Seneca Building which currently houses offices for PAETEC's successor
Windstream.
References
{{coord missing, New York (state)
Office buildings in Rochester, New York
Unbuilt buildings and structures in the United States
2012 in New York (state)