The Mallozzi family has stirred, baked and sprinkled their name onto and into the mix of the Schenectady community. Say “cannoli” while walking Main Street and chances are good the person next to you will say, “Villa Italia,” the family bakery — now known as Villa Italia Pasticceria — that is celebrating 50 years of business this year.
Three generations of this clan have made it their job to provide a taste of Italy to the local community, ever since Joseph Mallozzi purchased a pizzeria out of Rotterdam in 1965. “If the next generation wants to carry on with the business, I’m okay with that,” said Mallozzi Group co-owner Bobby Mallozzi. “And, if they don’t, I’m okay with that, too.”
Today, Joseph’s legacy has blossomed along with the recent successes enjoyed in downtown Schenectady. Walk out the front doors of Proctors, your footsteps take you across Main Street to Johnny’s. And, not by coincidence, if you walk out the back doors of the iconic theatre, you can follow the lights to Villa Italia, too. Between the restaurants, banquet houses, catering, bakery and boutique hotel, the Mallozzi Group employs approximately 320 people. More successes are promised as the casino emerges on the banks of the Mohawk, where the Mallozzi Group will be responsible for the on-site catering.
Schenectady has been good for the Mallozzi Group since moving Villa Italia downtown from Rotterdam ten years ago. But, as Bobby Mallozzi explains, that move almost didn’t happen a decade ago. In fact, it was one down payment away from not happening at all.
“When they knew that we were looking to move out of Rotterdam, we’d already gone ahead and put down a deposit on a building in Guilderland,” said Mallozzi, explaining the chain of events that resulted in Villa Italia moving from Rotterdam to Schenectady ten years ago.
The Mallozzis were approached by Metroplex Development Authority, with a proposal to move into Schenectady. “They really had a great vision for downtown Schenectady,” said Mallozzi. “There’s a lot of people who can take credit for it, but it’s really been them. They’re the driving force behind the development. They were the ones who were funding a lot of these projects that ordinarily, if they had to go through conventional financing, it wouldn’t have made since to come to Schenectady.”
The proposed business site is where Villa Italia Pasticceria stands today. A building Mallozzi described as “an old, abandoned brick warehouse.”
“At the time, there was nothing here,” he said. “We were very skeptical.”
Despite the deposit that was made on the property in Guilderland, Metroplex was able to convince the Mallozzi family, explaining the plans to help reshape downtown Schenectady. “When it came to creating a deal that was going to make it possible for us to come and justify the investment, they made it happen. Otherwise, we probably would not have made the gamble.
We celebrated our 40th anniversary in Rotterdam, and we had just decided to make the move to Schenectady. Which was pretty controversial. Not only for our customers, but for the people who knew us and they felt that this was a big gamble. This was a big risk. Downtown Schenectady ten years ago wasn’t anything like it is today; wasn’t like it is today five years ago. So, ten years ago, it was a big risk, but we had a lot of support from the people in the community who were here in Schenectady, who were already invested in the community.”
This networking has become more apparent over the years. Katherine Wolfram, who is heading up the charge for a downtown coop aptly named Electric City Coop, witnessed this first hand. When word spread about her efforts to introduce an urban coop in Schenectady, the Mallozzi Group invited her in.
“We just walked over to Villa Italia for birthday dessert for a friend, after spirits and good German food at the Biergarten,” said Wolfram, taking note of the city’s changing landscape. “What a nice city downtown Schenectady is becoming, that one can now have a walkable, global feast! And Villa Italia has scrumptious gluten-free desserts.
Now we just need a grocery market downtown to complete this vision of a walkable community,” she said. It’s the same game plan to which the two business operators appear to be stepping in unison.
“Ten years ago, the component that they needed to get in was retail,” said Mallozzi. “So, they got retail in. Retail helps bring jobs in. You’d think it would be the other way around, that you’d need the jobs to support the retail, but people don’t want to locate their business or bring their office into an area with nothing to do.”
The game play appears to be working. With the retail, said Mallozzi, has come the businesses. And, as businesses establish themselves, there is now a push for more residential buildings.
In Wolfram’s perspective, as she continues to push for the coop, “I think the power of networking between residents, civic and business leaders, and developers in the community and the community-owned Electric City Food Co-op is crucial.”
The Mallozzis say their recent growth started prior to moving to Schenectady, when the group opened the Belvedere Inn in 2001, and later worked itself into an exclusive partnership to cater for both the Western Turnpike Golf Course in Guilderland and the Italian American Community Center in Albany. The marriage between the catering and community centers was a business model conceptualized by the elder Mallozzi, and the same one adopted towards the upcoming casino.
“We’ve partnered with Rush Street Gaming. We’re going to be doing the food service for the casino. It involves four different concepts within the market place. There’s a steak house, and there’s a banquet facility. Our banquet facility here in Schenectady will provide all the baked goods, the bread rolls. … As far as expending outside of Schenectady, it’s not in the playbook right now. This is where we’re comfortable. It always been in our wheelhouse. … We’re just comfortable here. We love the people, the community. We’ve got a great, loyal customer base. We want to stay here.”
