LAKE PLACID – After the sale of the bankrupt former National Sports Academy fell through late last year, the building at 821 Mirror Lake Drive has been sold to local businessman Paolo Magro.

For a price of $1.13 million, Magro and his Magdi Lake Drive LLC purchased the property last month. Speaking this morning, Magro said he is initially looking to convert the 28,000-square-foot building into a boutique hotel.

“We like the building and we like its location,” Magro said. “We have a lot of ideas. (A boutique hotel) is the first option. We’ll see what the village and (Lake Placid-North Elba Joint Review) boards thinks of the idea.”

Magro said he has met with village Mayor Craig Randall and town of North Elba Code Enforcement Officer Jim Morganson, and he said both liked the idea. Magro said the initial idea is for the hotel to have 40 rooms. Other than that, Magro said he expects to meet with the project’s architect and designer in the coming days to settle on other elements of the boutique hotel plan, which may feature a spa, exercise room and swimming pool.

Magro said he has a crew currently working at the property to take apart sinks and showers in bathrooms, to start on dormitories in coming weeks.

The purchase comes after a previous agreed-upon sale of the property fell through early this year. In February, the United States Bankruptcy Court’s Northern District of New York approved a settlement between NSA and Walnut Woods LLC/Parkside Inn LLC and Jacob Wright of Lake Placid. In January, those LLCs informed National Sports Academy they were terminating the contract of sale. NSA and Walnut Woods contracted to buy the property for $1.14 million last July.

NSA had filed for bankruptcy in January 2015, and the school closed on June 1 of that year after several years of sagging enrollment and debt. The private high school for winter sport student-athletes included 23 Olympians in its 38 years, and the building was put on the market for roughly $1.4 million.

Walnut Woods/Parkside Inn had stated plans to turn the building into a 24-unit hotel with Clarkson University “Hot Spot” office spaces for up to eight to 10 businesses. The sale was delayed for months largely due to concerns from local officials and other business owners about the limited amount of parking available on the property.

The Joint Review Board also expressed concern including traffic circulation patterns, snow storage and removal, screening of the parking area, stormwater management control and green space.

Magro said the boutique hotel would need another 10 to 12 parking spaces. Randall said with Magro’s current plan 75 percent of the needed parking spaces by zoning code are met, and a temporary solution could be to purchase permits through the village. It’s similar to what The Haus boutique hotel does on Main Street, though those spots would not be designated.

“He’s presented several options, but the ultimate solution hasn’t been presented or approved yet, and all that goes back to the parking issue,” Morganson said.

“It’s a building that has great potential,” the code enforcement officer added. “It’ll be his second project he’s tackled over here in Placid. We don’t want the building to be vacant.”

In Saranac Lake, Magro also owns Little Italy Pizzeria, the Saranac Lake Shopping Center, the Wholesale Furniture building and its adjacent parking lot that he leases for public use. In Lake Placid, he owns the Lake Placid Inn, a renovated former motel that is now vacation suites on Saranac Avenue.

The sale enabled NSA to shed some of its outstanding debt. Last month, a July 2013 tax lien against NSA in an amount of nearly $70,000 was released by the U.S. Internal Revenue Service. Adirondack Bank also withdrew a claim in U.S. Bankruptcy Court last month against NSA for a mortgage loan in an undisclosed amount. When the school filed for bankruptcy in January 2015, Adirondack Bank submitted a claim against the school for more than $545,000 it said it was owed from a $1.13 million mortgage.

Senior Staff Writer Chris Knight contributed to this report.