TAMPA, Fla. — The Y. Pendas y Alvarez Cigar factory, a 43,000 square-foot factory that’s been empty for years, now has a new owner and is now home to Wine Stream Inc., an Italian wine company.

The factory has been around for 114 years, and it has a unique clock tower that at one point used to be the tallest in Florida back in 1908.

Wine Stream Inc is a family-run business, and they not only wanted to fix up this old building, but to make the clock and the bell work again. It took some time, but they replaced the four huge clock faces and fixed the bell. 

Ted Boscaino, the Vice President of Wine Stream Inc., says this entire project has been a labor of love. “When we rang it for the first time, it was a weird moment. It’s almost like the history of the building woke up again.”

Boscaino said that the inside of the factory was in rough shape and was filled with a ton of trash and machinery left over from the last business that operated there several years ago. While clearing things out, they found a lot of cool items like Coke bottles dating back to the 1920s and old cigar boxes from that same time frame.

He says they hit the ground running and are working to turn the factory into a wine bar and restaurant. They already operate huge vats of wine the company imports from Italy.

Boscaino says he is a history buff and that the company is going to incorporate a lot of the history of the building into the business and give customers a unique experience.

“It has a big history and so it’s a beautiful neighbor that needs to be revamped and revitalized, and we’re just a small part of that mechanism and that growth," he said.

He says there is still a ton of work to be done but they do hope have at least part of the business open to the public before the end of the year.