Carter Rankin, the businessman who is leasing the Commanding Officer’s Quarters, has a little more time to turn it into a place where the owners of home-based companies can meet with clients in a professional setting.

Rankin would be the first full-time tenant in the 150-year-old building since the city of Benicia remodeled the historic landmark. He originally planned to take over last November, but investment and business plan delays forced him to ask Benicia City Council to modify his contract and delay its execution for five months.

He’ll still be required to give the city a $15,000 security deposit, but at its April 21 meeting the Council agreed to let Rankin divide the deposit into two payments. He paid $5,000 of the deposit that night; the balance is due July 1.

Built just before the outbreak of the Civil War, the Commanding Officer’s Quarters has been called “The Queen of the Arsenal.” It was built to be the home of the family of the commander of the Benicia Arsenal when it was operated by the U.S. Army.

After the Army closed the Arsenal in 1964 and the city acquired the property, the Commanding Officer’s Quarters was turned into a Bay Area destination restaurant, the Commandant’s Residence Restaurant, that opened in 1979.

A fire in June 1986 forced the restaurant to close. Investigation of the blaze revealed burn damage and other safety and health hazards that caused the building to be shuttered for about 20 years, until the city began its $3 million overhaul and restoration in 2008. It concluded with a rededication in 2009.

During the building’s years of disuse, city officials originally sought new restaurant tenants, but those efforts were abandoned by the time the building was restored.

The Commanding Officer’s Quarters formally went on the lease market in February 2010, during tougher economic times and with limits on the type of tenants who would qualify.

Rankin’s concept for the building was that rather than the site of a single company, it could become the professional office site of multiple businesses.

That’s something akin to the business incubator system Mayor Elizabeth Patterson had suggested for the building a few years earlier, calling it a way to encourage the growth of new companies in Benicia.

Rankin told employees he wanted to open a company that provided home-based business owners a professional setting for meetings and conferences.

He said the building also would be equipped with the tools and office appliances a businessperson would need, from Internet connectivity to a library in which the person could conduct work he or she could not do at home.

During a meeting of the Historic Preservation Review Commission, Rankin said those using the building would become members of his company, Carter’s Biz Cafés. In exchange for their membership, the mobile professionals would receive concierge services, video conferencing, meeting rooms and a place for hospitality events and classes, with necessary support staff.

The Commanding Officer’s Quarters is the first of a series of planned Carter’s Biz Cafés, he said, with others anticipated for other locations in the Bay Area.

Because Rankin is having to prepare the historic building carefully for his company, he will be allowed to use the Commanding Officer’s Quarters rent-free from April 22 to June 30, according to lease revisions approved April 21 by the Council.

To give him time to build up his clientele, the city will charge him $500 a month from July 1 through June 30, 2016. That rises sharply July 1, 2016, to $3,500 a month; increases to $5,900 a month July 1, 2017; to $6,077 a month July 1, 2018; and to $6,266 a month July 1, 2019 to June 30, 2020.

The total revenue to the city for the first 66 months will be $191,724, Economic Development Manager Mario Giuliani explained to the Council prior to the April 21 meeting. “The proposed changes only alter the date, not the amount in which the security deposit and monthly rent become due.”

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