Fulton Moves to Raze Fire Damaged Building 61 as $55 Million Hampton Inn Project Advances on Former Nestle Site

Fulton Mayor Jim Rice went before the common council on July 7 to talk about one number: Building 61, the half burned shell that still stands in the weeds south of the Aldi parking lot on South Fourth Street, on land where the Nestle chocolate plant ran for 103 years. The city plans to demolish what is left of the structure, Rice told councilors, according to reporting published July 13 by the Palladium-Times. Clearing it would remove one of the last visible scars on a property that a Rochester developer has agreed to turn into a $55 million hotel, housing and retail district.

The timing matters. Fulton’s council voted in November 2025 to authorize the mayor to sign an agreement with INDUS Hospitality Group, the Rochester area firm planning an 80 room Hampton Inn and a walkable mixed use development with a town center concept on the old factory land, the Palladium-Times reported at the time. Every month the burned hulk stands, it undercuts the sales pitch.

Anyone who drives Route 481 through Fulton knows the spot. The plant once covered roughly one million square feet on a 24 acre site along the highway, according to Construction Equipment Guide, the trade publication that documented the demolition in 2016. Today the parcel holds an Aldi supermarket, open field, and the remnant of Building 61, which Rice described to the council as damaged by fire, per the Palladium-Times account of the July 7 meeting.

A $55 million bet on the factory land

The redevelopment plan is the largest private investment proposed in Fulton in a generation, and the man tracking it for the county laid out its scope in February. Austin Wheelock, executive director of Operation Oswego County, told Oswego County Business Magazine that INDUS Hospitality Group holds a signed purchase offer with the city for the remainder of the Nestle site.

“They are looking to do a mixed-use development that would include an 80-room Hampton Inn Hotel, 10,000 square foot of new retail space, 75 units of market rate housing,” Wheelock said, adding the plan includes a public plaza and walking trails connecting the pieces. “Kind of creating a little community within the city. That is one of the big things we’ve been working on with the leadership of the city of Fulton and the developer since the summer of 2025. It’s a $55 million project; a new hub with a new vitality.”

Rice, in the same magazine’s 2026 Progress issue, said the groundwork is already done on the city side. “It’s all been rezoned; it’s multi-use now. That paves the way for development there,” the mayor said. He also said the city converted a grant dating to 2017, originally meant for site infrastructure, into funding for a Phase 2 environmental assessment, the study that determines what contamination remains and what remediation the land needs before construction.

That environmental work is the gate everything else swings on. A Phase 2 assessment on the remainder of the Nestle site will be completed and is expected to serve as a catalyst for development of the vacant land, the magazine reported.

From 1,700 paychecks to a vacant lot

The stakes read differently in Fulton than they would in a city that never lost its anchor. Nestle opened the Fulton plant in 1900, and chocolate production began there in 1908, according to Construction Equipment Guide. At its peak in the 1970s the factory employed 1,700 people, the publication reported, with an annual payroll of $22 million. The last 450 workers lost their jobs when Nestle closed the plant in 2003 and shifted production to facilities in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Brazil.

The plant made Quik, Crunch bars and Toll House morsels over its final decades, according to Construction Equipment Guide, and the average employee stayed 27 years. When Nestle pulled out, the company cited cost prohibitive restorations and updates the aging complex needed. Fulton has been arguing with the consequences ever since.

Former mayor Ron Woodward put the plant’s place in local memory simply when Spectrum News profiled the site in 2016. “Every Halloween, the kids in this town made out great,” he said. Sue Lane, interviewed in the same segment, reminded viewers that chocolate was not even the original business: “In the late 1800s, a man by the name of Mr. Nestle started the company. It wasn’t the chocolate. It was a milk company.” The demolition crews that leveled most of the complex in 2016 crushed the brick on site for reuse as fill, Construction Equipment Guide reported, and Woodward told the publication that everyone in town had some connection to the factory.

What the wrecking ball did not solve, money eventually addressed. Fulton won a $10 million state Downtown Revitalization Initiative award in the program’s fourth round, announced in August 2019, according to the New York Department of State. When the state detailed the spending plan in May 2021, more than $4 million of it pointed at the Nestle corridor and the blocks around it.

Where the state’s $10 million went

The Department of State’s project list put $2 million toward expanded medical services at Oswego Health’s downtown Fulton campus, $1.5 million toward converting a former Nestle building into 55 to 65 residential units with office space, a restaurant and a Nestle museum, and $860,000 toward a new manufacturing startup facility on the former factory site. Another $1,713,000 went to waterfront improvements at the Canal Landing marina, $820,000 to the Pathfinder Canal Towpath Trail, and $420,000 to manufacturing infrastructure upgrades at Huhtamaki’s plant. The full award funded 16 projects, including a $750,000 business assistance grant fund, $311,000 for the Fulton Public Library and $200,000 for fiber and Wi-Fi infrastructure downtown.

Several of those investments have opened their doors. Ribbon cuttings in the DRI zone over the past year included the CNY Arts Center, Eastern Shore Associates, C.A. Fitzpatrick Financial, the Fulton Medical Campus operated by Oswego Health, and LorBird Casual Food Choices, according to the 2026 Progress report in Oswego County Business Magazine. Rice told the magazine that nine new business applications had been submitted to the DRI project review committee just since November.

The residential plan for the site’s Building 30 has traveled a longer road. In July 2022, CNY Central reported that Syracuse firm Construction, Design and Management Inc. planned 65 to 70 mixed income units in the 130,000 square foot building at South Fourth and Fay streets. That version stalled. The current plan calls for demolition of Building 30 in 2026, with a 60 unit housing project breaking ground at Seventh and Fay streets and the Oswego County IDA building a new manufacturing incubator, both DRI projects, per the magazine’s report.

Manufacturing is not past tense here

While the old factory site waits on remediation, Fulton’s biggest current factory just committed to staying. The county Industrial Development Agency approved an extension of Huhtamaki’s payment in lieu of taxes agreement at a January 22 meeting, Wheelock told Oswego County Business Magazine, clearing the way for two new production lines at the Fulton packaging plant in the first half of 2026.

“They are the second largest manufacturer in Oswego County and the largest private employer in Fulton. That company has a payroll of more than $30 million,” Wheelock said. “It’s a great project, about $1 million investment. They’ve added two die cutting machines and two forming machines.” The deal helps retain more than 400 jobs, he said.

Rice confirmed the same figure separately. “Huhtamaki has a new PILOT agreement, so that will keep 400 jobs in Fulton,” the mayor said. “They continue to invest in Fulton; that’s all good stuff.”

Smaller shops are filling in behind the big employer. N.E.T. Tool & Die, a restore award recipient, is operating at the old Kmart site and added four jobs while increasing automation, Rice told the magazine. “They are open and running over at the old Kmart site. It’s pretty impressive,” he said. On the retail side, LorBird Casual Food Choices held its ribbon cutting in September and has been open since a soft launch that followed. “I think they have been somewhat of an attraction to visitors who maybe haven’t been to our city,” Rice said of the restaurant. “It’s a nice complement to what we already have.”

Why city hall needs the site to produce

The redevelopment push is running alongside a hard budget year, and the two stories are connected. “We had a difficult budget season. Residents here saw a significant tax increase,” Rice said in the 2026 Progress interview, attributing the squeeze to years of revenue projections the city was never going to hit. The cuts were concrete: “We have 21 parks to mow and maintain. We typically do that with a seasonal workforce. That was cut by more than half for 2026.”

The pressure has sharpened council scrutiny of the vacant Nestle properties themselves. At the June 16 council meeting, Ward 4 Councilor Mark Sherman criticized the city’s handling of the site, sharing photos on social media of what he described as inadequate security and arguing the city itself should face code violation fines, Oswego County Today reported the following day.

Rice has been direct about what a built out Nestle site would mean for the ledger. “If we keep business growth going and if we get something done with the Nestle site, that is going to benefit our revenues. That is really what we need to work on,” he said.

The mayor is not promising a construction season. Asked about the INDUS project’s timing, Rice said: “I don’t know if we will have shovels in the ground in 2026, although there is a possibility. We could get some remediation started.” Twenty three years after the last 450 Nestle workers clocked out, the city’s next move is scheduled and specific: take down Building 61, finish the Phase 2 environmental study, and hand INDUS a site clean enough to hold a $55 million bet.