Frank Callipari never planned to invest in Watford. But now, his first investment into Warwick is open and he’s looking to the future.

Callipari of Castell Homes wanted to buy some land in Lambeth. The owner was playing hardball. “He basically said to us, ‘well, if you want Lambeth, and you got to take this, too.”

Callipari and his brother agreed purchasing the property site-unseen. When they did go to investigate, they were a little concerned with what they found. The historic building had not been well cared for, windows were boarded up and there were tenants in the building who simply were not keeping care of it. A file from the owner showed there had been “six or seven” fires in the historic hotel which visitors first saw coming into Watford from Alvinston.

“I said, ‘Okay, well, we need to sell this building right away.’”

The only prospective buyer would take it off their hands, but only wanted to resell it. That, Callipari said, would meant the old building would remain in a state of disrepair. So, the builders started thinking and they eventually met with Warwick Township council proposing to remove an entire block of dilapidated buildings.

“How can we figure out something to clean this corner so I made a proposal to them to all buy all the buildings” he said Monday. The key would be the municipality becoming an anchor tenant to the grouping of new buildings Callipari envisioned.

“Anything that is a strong tenant brings people through, would help bring in the rest.”

And the deal was struck. Monday, Callipari was in the crowd when the new municipal office officially opened. Just down the street, Libro Financial’s new building was busy with customers. Callipari says a dentist and a national food chain will be tenants in two of the remaining four units. Callipari will use one of the others as an office for his planned subdivision, Heritage Creek.

Mayor Jackie Rombouts says aside from having a great new building for the municipality, the development has “changed the gateway into our community on so many levels and just brightened up the whole community.”

Rombouts is glad Warwick council chose to be the anchor tenant which “gave him the incentive to be able to do the rest of the developments and to really invest in our community.

And as Callipari builds more houses in Watford, he hopes others will spruce up their buildings, too.

“What I hope happens here is that other businesses start investing into their buildings that they already own, or landlords start investing, or turning over whatever needs to happen.”