Union offices to move into former Diplomat Party House

The Diplomat Banquet Center, the last of Rochester's spacious party houses, will be repurposed over the next year as a headquarters for local unions.

"The Diplomat became available to us and it fits our needs perfectly," said Dan DiClemente, the president of local Council 66 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, or AFSCME.

AFSCME purchased the party house on Lyell Avenue in Gates and will also provide rental space to other local unions.

"We feel like we have a stake in the community and an ownership in the community by owning such an iconic building that everybody knows," DiClemente said. "It has plenty of parking, and banquet space that we can use for events."

The Diplomat was built in 1963, when it was called Cottrone’s Party House. Louis Polizzi, who bought it in 1976 changed the name from "Diplomat Party House" to "Diplomat Banquet Center" years ago as the term "party house" fell out of favor.

The pandemic, coupled with the loss of major corporations and their events in recent years, slowed business at the Diplomat. In an interview with the Democrat and Chronicle in May about the closure, Polizzi, 86, said: "I’m in mourning right now. I’m so depressed it’s unreal. I worked every day of my life.”

"The highlight of owning the businesses was it was as successful as it was," he said.

Planning to move to the Diplomat are the unions for City of Rochester employees and another for Rochester City School District support staff workers - AFCSME Local 1635 and BENTE Local 2419 respectively.

"We're all paying rent to separate landlords and were kind of at the whim of whatever leases we were under," DiClemente said.

The work at the Diplomat could take a year before it's ready for the unions to move in, he said.

(Includes reporting by staff writer Tracy Schuhmacher)

This article originally appeared on Rochester Democrat and Chronicle: Union offices to move into former Diplomat Banquet House in Gates