🔒How the former owners of the Bull Mansion bought it for $487K, sold it for $1.2M, and made no money

For her next venture, entrepreneur Victoria Mariano does not want to run a restaurant, or be an operator in any way.

Mariano, 33, and her business partner Adi Tibrewal, are looking for investments requiring few day-to-day responsibilities, like parking lots or land for solar farms.

The duo seemingly already made out on their last investment, having bought the historic Bull Mansion on Pearl Street in downtown Worcester for $487,500 in 2016 and selling it for $1.16 million to a Rhode Island investor in January.

Yet, after paying all their back taxes and bills and calculating the cost and time spent running a restaurant and events space in the 144-year-old Bull Mansion for nearly three years, Tibrewal and Mariano simply broke even.

Now, they are looking for new opportunities requiring a significantly less hands-on role.

“The first couple of years are going to be no-risk investment,” Mariano said.

Operating in the red

Simply buying the Bull Mansion was a tricky venture.

Mariano, who lives in Spencer, and Tibrewal, 41, who lives in Worcester, met as students at Clark University in Worcester when Tibrewal was studying for his master’s degree. They hadn’t worked together before, but when Mariano was looking for properties and found the Bull Mansion, she thought of him.

Tibrewal was the assistant vice president of Blue Hills Bank in Boston at the time, while Mariano previously founded the Electric Haze and Spiritual Haze hookah lounges in Worcester. Mariano thought Tibrewal’s financial expertise and community-building skills would complement her skills in setting up consumer-facing businesses.

“She brings this amazing creative thinking behind most things, while I bring in more of a corporate mindset,” Tibrewal said.

Because the last business operating out of the Bull Mansion was a restaurant closed in 2010, Tibrewal and Mariano had a difficult time lining up a loan to buy the property.

Tibrewal worked his connections in the banking industry, and eventually Lowell Five Cents Savings Bank provided the original mortgage for the duo to purchase the Bull Mansion for $487,500 in March 2016, far below its asking price of $850,000.

“I had people who had to give their personal guarantees in order to get the loan through,” Tibrewal said.

The duo had a bold vision: an events space, live music and a farm-to-table restaurant. They invested $150,000 of their own equity to renovate the property. The restaurant and events space opened in September 2016, hosting a party for the POW! WOW! Worcester graffiti art festival.

In the first year, the restaurant and events space generated more than $1 million in revenue, but the business still ran at a loss. The commitment to buying food from local farms was costly, and the amount of food waste contributed significantly to the financial losses.

“All the cost we incurred was normal for the first year, when you are still figuring everything out,” Mariano said.

In the second year, the restaurant scaled back from being open every day to closing on Mondays and Tuesdays, with no lunch service. Eventually, operating hours of the restaurant were scaled back to just the weekends. The business generated $700,000 in revenue for the second year, and it still ran in the red.

“You want profits, not more revenues. You don’t take percentages home. You take dollars home,” Tibrewal said.

In the third year, the business scaled back to only events and catering. Tibrewal was talking to Clark University about bringing in more events, sat on the board of Mechanics Hall to develop more community connections, and was building corporate relationships.

The business was profitable for the first time on $500,000 in revenue.

“We had a great community of people who supported us,” Tibrewal said.

Yet, Mariano was far more heavily involved in the operations than she wanted to be. With Electric Haze and Spiritual Haze, she had set up the businesses and then turned them over to staff to run largely on their own. Bull Mansion was taking up too much of her time.

“We saw our part in Bull Mansion more as landlords, less like operators,” Mariano said.

In mid-2019, they began to look for investors or a third party to lease the facility. Redemption Rock Brewing Co. and Cambridge restaurant Henrietta's Table toured the space, Mariano said, but nothing ever came of it.

In September, the Bull Mansion had its liquor license seized by the Massachusetts Department of Revenue over nonpayment of about $60,000 of meals taxes, and events scheduled for the space had to go elsewhere. The business never reopened.

Sold at a 138% increase

But in the same month, Tibrewal and Mariano signed a purchase-and-sale agreement to sell the Bull Mansion for $1.16 million to Rhode Island real estate investor Jackson Song through his company Arkland LLC. Song was previously a professor of stone artwork in China, and he was impressed by the historic Bull Mansion’s exterior.

“I really like stone buildings, and that is why we bought this building,” Song said.

Mariano and Tibrewal originally listed the Bull Mansion for $1.2 million, even though most commercial real estate brokers they spoke to felt its value was closer to $900,000, Mariano said. The property was last assessed by the City of Worcester for $699,900.

“Worcester is attracting outside investors from all over, who are willing to pay more,” Mariano said. “Investors from Worcester are so cheap. No one thought we would get what we sold it for.”

The deal closed in January. After paying off their loans and their tax debt, Mariano and Tibrewal received a check for $344,000. Factoring all they invested into operating the Bull Mansion restaurant and events space for three years, they didn’t come out ahead on the deal.

“We didn’t make a profit. We broke even,” Mariano said.

As for the future of the Bull Mansion, Song said he has signed a lease with California entrepreneur Nick Greco, who wants to open a restaurant in the space.

Greco originally planned on creating a science fiction-themed cafe, but since the nonprofit Preservation Worcester has a historic restriction on the property, the amount and type of renovations able to be done to the interior and exterior of the building is limited.

“What is going to go there? Who knows?” Greco said. “We do want to be good neighbors, and the best way to do that is to work hand-in-hand with Preservation Worcester on the plans for the building.”

The partnership lives on

Mariano and Tibrewal still plan to work together, investing in real estate. Tibrewal is working to bring in other investors as well.

“We are just getting started,” Tibrewal said. “Our focus now is strategic investment, and not operating.”

The duo are looking at offer letters for certain properties around Worcester, particularly those already with a positive cash flow. If a property has a business on it, the company must already be established and operating, they said.

“Nothing that requires us to be operators,” Mariano said. “There needs to be no risk involved. We want to get this venture started the right way.”