“It’d be a sin to take it down,” Cassata said. “That’s way too cool to remove.”

His plans with the historic building on the corner of state Route 3 are to preserve all the original cases, counters and woodwork, with plans to eventually reopen the first floor to the public.

Cassata knows people want to see it filled with food and conversation again. After the Enterprise reported on the building’s pending sale, flocks of people who remember the hey-days of Norman’s General Store from 1904 to 2015 took to the comment section to voice these hopes.

With his business offices on the second floor and the shop in the back, he envisions a coffee shop and convenience store in the front, selling cups of java, products from local farms and breweries, prepackaged sandwiches, fish and tackle, canned goods and other essentials.

Andrew Cassata and his dog Remi stand outside the former Norman’s General Store in Bloomingdale. Cassata bought the building last week for his company MC Construction, with the potential for a public business on the first floor. (Enterprise photo — Aaron Marbone)

Cassata wants to be clear — this is not going to be immediate. He said he does not want to set false expectations.

“Really it’s sort of a down the road project,” he said.

His first order of business is to move his construction company and shop in. That’s happening now. Then, he wants to take care of building — restoring the wood, painting the outside, replacing the large plate glass windows in the front.

He has no concrete plans for a retail or coffee business yet, but within the next year he hopes to have something simple set up to test the waters. He does not have time to run this sort of business himself, he said — he already runs several businesses and has a one-year-old with his wife, Liz Francisco. But he said he could run the business aspect of it, or lease the space.

His residential construction business, MC Construction, was displaced in a January 2023 fire at the Aubuchon plaza in Saranac Lake.

Andrew Cassata and his dog Remi stand outside the former Norman’s General Store in Bloomingdale. Cassata bought the building last week for his company MC Construction, with the potential for a public business on the first floor. (Enterprise photo — Aaron Marbone)

Cassata said his lawyer brought the Norman’s property to his attention, and he said he loves the character of the building. It’s “packed” with it. The insides are practically all original from 120 years ago — all the wood and the shelves.

Cassata is excited to find a use for the rope-operated freight elevator in the building. The cash register counter, currently cut in three pieces in the basement — that’s definitely going back upstairs, he said.

With his dog Remi by his side, he combed through the drawers and nooks on Wednesday looking at the artifacts of the former store — a box of price tags, a receipt book.

“I’ve always kind of had an eye for older stuff,” Cassata said.

He enjoys classic cars and fixer-upper homes. The nostalgia these things evoke speaks to him. He likes paying attention to the small practical creations that people take pride in.

Andrew Cassata checks out the woodworking and metal handles inside the former Norman’s General Store in Bloomingdale while his dog Remi checks out the photographer. (Enterprise photo — Aaron Marbone)

He raved over the designs on the metal pulls on drawers labeled “wicks and burners” or “socks and mits.” Someone put thought into these little ornate designs, he said, and each one was hand-made. They didn’t come pressed from a factory back then.

Cassata’s goal is to refinish the shelves, counters and woodwork. There’s a lot of “cool stuff” he’ll be keeping.

“Keeping the character is huge,” he said. “After I’m long dead and gone, I would much rather all this stuff stay behind for somebody else to appreciate and to keep that history there.”

The whole building is in relatively good shape for how old it is, he said. It’s evident to him that the building was taken care of really well, even after it was closed to the public.

“You can tell that there was care,” he said.

Cassata said he would start small-scale with a retail business — just the basics and catering to locals and tourists. He’d like it be be a social gathering place like it was before.

The building doesn’t have the ability to have a certified kitchen right now and it would take a lot of money to get one. He wants to see if the customer base is enough to make it thrive first before considering serving food cooked there. It closed in 2015 for a reason, he said. He’s hearing from people who say they would want to shop there again.

Cassata said Bloomingdale has become sort of a “hub” in the area. Another business displaced by the 2023 fire, ADK Solar, set up shop across the Bloomingdale Four Corners from Norman’s last year.

The two-story Norman’s building, built in 1904, operated as a country store and general store all the way up until 2015, passing from founder M.B. Norman, to his daughter Mildred, to her daughter Norma and son-in-law Art Niederbuhl Sr., then to their son Arthur S. Niederbuhl, “Artie,” who ran the store from the 1990s until its closing.

Starting as the area’s only market, Norman’s expanded into clothing sales and then added a local butcher shop, renowned for its meats and cheeses. It kept the Great Camps of the area stocked, including the Rockefeller, Stone Lehman, Colgate estates, the Loon Lake Hotel and the St. Lawrence University camps, according to a 2015 article written by Diane Chase in Adirondack Living.

Cassata guesses the days of a full-time butcher are probably gone.

A raised area of the floor near the back of the main room shows exactly where the cash register counter stood. The raised area is where the floor was originally. Over the years, so many people stood in front of and behind the register, they warped the wooden floorboards.

The building, with just below 50,000 square feet of space, was used as office space by Niederbuhl Bros Tree Service for a time.

The Niederbuhl family owned it most recently, until the sale was finalized last week by realtors Sandy Hayes and Kristina Clifford of Say Real Estate.

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CLARIFICATION: This story was updated to include the last generation of Niederbuhls to operate Norman’s — Arthur S. Niederbuhl, “Artie,” who ran the store from the 1990s until its closing.