Lynchburg Business

Lofts and Light: Breathing New Life into an Old Tobacco Warehouse in Lynchburg

Issue: February 2012 by Suzanne Ramsey in Inside The Magazine, Real Estate

For more than a decade, Tony West has been buying and renovating properties around Lynchburg, a lot of times buildings no one else cares about.

“I always buy what nobody else wants and kind of fix them up,” the Amherst native said. “Some things, I patch and fix up a little and give people great [lease] rates, but some places, you have right much work to do.”

West currently owns about 100 commercial buildings, including the Tarkington Building on Memorial Avenue, and about 70 or 80 residential structures. He’s also co-owner of Robin Alexander, a restaurant on the corner of Washington and Main streets in downtown Lynchburg.

Two years ago, he bought 50 Washington Street. The 15,592-square-foot building sits on a half-acre, just across the railroad tracks from Concord Turnpike and a stone’s throw from the James River. It was one of those buildings that, as West alluded to earlier, needed “right much work.”

Built in 1900, 50 Washington Street was listed in the 1917 city directory as “G. Bruning Tobacco Extract Company.” Since then, it has gone through several owners, suffered a fire that destroyed the third floor and roof, and has been largely neglected. The owner prior to West planned to turn it into a blues club, but that never happened.

Now, the old tobacco warehouse has been reborn as loft apartments. There are 13 of them, ranging in size from 470 to 1,100 square feet, including two efficiencies—also called studio apartments—eight one-bedroom units and one two-bedroom apartment. They rent for $600 to $1,150 per month, which includes water and off-street parking.

Each unit has a washer and dryer, stainless steel kitchen appliances, hardwood floors, granite countertops and custom cabinetry by Thomas A. Johnson of Lynchburg, who also crafted the building’s new exterior doors. There are exposed beams, brick walls, and massive “factory sash” windows that flood the apartments with natural light.

Although the appliances, fixtures and materials used in each apartment are identical, each layout is unique. For example, one unit has an upstairs bedroom, some are U-shaped and others rectangular.

“The really nice thing about this building is each unit is different,” Leslie Kozera, the leasing agent, said. “They’re similar in floor plan but … each one has something quirky about it and I think that’s really cool.”

The building is part of the Lower Basin Historic District, a national designation that also includes the Craddock-Terry Hotel and several other 19th- and early-20th-century commercial and industrial buildings along Lynchburg’s riverfront.

The designation enabled West to use historic tax credits for the project. To help him through the application and renovation process, West hired Polis, a Richmond group that specializes in managing this sort of work.

Polis is currently involved in other Lynchburg projects, as well, including the development of Piedmont Mill, just across Washington Street from West’s apartments, and the former Virginia School of the Arts building on Rivermont Avenue.

“Our role in this project, as a company, is to assist developers that are not familiar with the historic tax credit redevelopment model,” Chris Chadwick, managing partner with Polis, said. “What we do is come in and project manage it for them and help them identify credit investors and historic tax credits.”

With historic tax credits, however, maintaining the building’s historical integrity is paramount. While the inside of the building could be as modern and hip as West envisioned, the outside had to look like it did when William McKinley was president.

Todd Dykshorn, an architect with Polis, did the design work for the project.

“We call it historic adaptive reuse,” Dykshorn, an architect since 1998, said. “The Piedmont Mill, right across the street, is a classic example: a building that is no longer functioning as originally intended but has historic merit for one reason or another.”

The biggest challenge Dykshorn faced was reproducing the masonry destroyed in the fire. The original parapets weren’t replaced after the blaze. Neither were the third-floor windows. Instead, the owner at the time opted for a hipped roof and two above-ground floors instead of three.

Luckily for Dykshorn, Lynchburg History, a local online company that specializes in historic photos and maps, had pictures of 50 Washington Street taken before the fire.

“In this case, we had pretty good documentation of what was there originally, so we could go back and use photographic evidence to reconstruct [it],” he said.

Today, the masonry work is done, and except for a slight color difference between the new and old brick, the repairs are seamless. The new third floor windows, made by Accutech Fabrication on Orchard Street, are identical to the originals on the rest of the building.

“He did a really good job,” West said, referring to Ron Slagle, the Accutech’s owner.

Tenants are all that is missing, including a commercial tenant, possibly a restaurant, for the 3,000-square-foot ground floor. With the James River Heritage Trail right across the street and new restaurants, shops and other loft apartments sprouting up downtown, leasing agent Kozera hopes young professionals and even students will be drawn to the apartments.

Lynchburg City Council’s recent decision to fast track the Lower Bluffwalk project should also help, she said.

“That’s going to be a tremendous draw for the city,” she said of the project, which centers on the area between Jefferson and Commerce streets. “I’ve seen the plans … and they’re beautiful.”