Former Pooch's Leisure Room in Solvay to become ice cream shoppe
A burned-out Solvay bar on Milton Avenue has reopened as Scoops Ice Cream Shoppe, turning a long-vacant eyesore into a busy family stop.
A long-empty corner of Milton Avenue in Solvay got a second life when Scoops Ice Cream Shoppe opened on the first floor of the restored building at 1623 Milton Avenue. The former Pooch’s Leisure Room had sat damaged since a fire forced it to close in 2017, and the new business has already been drawing steady traffic to a site many neighbors had watched go unused for years.
That shift matters in a village where walkable, consumer-facing businesses can change how a block feels. A burned-out shell does not invite people to linger, but an ice cream shop does. It gives parents a reason to stop after dinner, brings families onto the sidewalk, and adds one more everyday destination to a stretch of Milton Avenue that has been waiting for reinvestment.
The shop is owned by Joe Salvagni, a former Onondaga County sheriff’s deputy who previously ran a Scoops location on Route 11 in Cicero. Salvagni sold that store in 2023 so he could serve in the mission field through Coram Deo Ministries. The Cicero shop later became Cloud Nine Creamery and Cafe under new ownership, while Salvagni set up in Solvay with a larger menu and a highly visible corner location in the village.
Scoops Ice Cream Shoppe is offering 44 flavors of hard ice cream, seven flavors of soft-serve, and Salvagni’s father’s black raspberry frozen yogurt, which has quickly become a favorite. The business has been described as booming since it opened last week, and Salvagni has said he is continuing to expand in Solvay, a sign that the storefront is being positioned as more than a seasonal dessert stop.
The reopening also fits into a broader change on the village’s commercial strip. Solvay is moving ahead with a separate $10 million development project on Milton and Cogswell that will bring 33 new apartments and storefronts, adding to the sense that the corridor is shifting from long-vacant property toward new street-level activity. For a block that once featured a fire-damaged building remembered for what it lost, the new shop gives residents something far more ordinary and useful: a place to walk to, meet at, and return to.
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