Old mills get new life, Scranton retrofit, pandemic creates new spaces
What's new in adaptive reuse and historic building preservation.
Hello, readers!
Summer is hot and so is the adaptive reuse and preservation market, if you’re judging by the stream of news sources cranking out stories in August. Here are just some of them.
CURATED PROJECTS
Groundbreaking: Historic Racine Horlick Malted Milk Company
CG Schmidt, hosted a groundbreaking at the Historic Racine Horlick Malted Milk Company. The event celebrated the beginning of a mixed and re-adaptive use project that will provide 136 market-rate and affordable residential units in the City of Racine. With buildings dating back to 1875, the first phase will revamp the original 2100 and 2200 Northwestern Ave. buildings within the historic industrial complex. State and federal historical tax credits will help J. Jeffers to finance the $40 million phase one of the project.
Project update: Music meets retrofit
How do you illustrate the transformation of downtown Milwaukee's Warner Grand Theatre (1930) into the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra's (MSO) new Bradley Symphony Center? Make a video and add a Stravinsky soundtrack performed by the MSO! H/T: MacRostie Historic Advisors.
Source.
New project: Old Charlotte mill gets new life
I have always had a soft spot for old mills, especially ones seeing new life and even more so those that provide a service to a community, like housing. Plans are underway to:
transform the last vacant building in the Johnston Mill complex into more than 200 apartments. The Community Builders filed preliminary site plans to revamp the Johnston Mill, which has sat idle along North Davidson Street for years. The Boston-based developer plans to build between 230 and 235 units between the mill and a new building the firm would construct alongside it.
Groundbreaking: Lace factory being transformed
A historic lace factory in Scranton, PA, (The Electric City!) built in the 1890s will soon be a new place to “live, work and play.” Developer Donald Rinaldi is planning a massive retrofit the blighted Scranton Lace factory complex that goes back 130 years, with plans to convert the factory buildings into an apartment/townhouse residential and commercial center called Lace Village.
OTHER LINKS THAT MIGHT INTEREST YOU
As the Pandemic Empties Office Buildings, Can Those Spaces Help Solve the Housing Crisis?
The piece posits that “an abundance of vacant commercial real estate could be transformed into what the real estate market is most desperately clamoring for: housing.”
Vacant Real Estate Is The Golden Ticket To The Housing Crisis
Jennifer Castenson from Hanley Wood is now writing for Forbes - great stuff.
How the Pandemic Could Spark More Conversion Projects
Richard Rubin, founder & CEO of Repvblik, believes that many “empty commercial properties can be converted into affordable housing communities, catering to the skyrocketing need for housing options at the lower end of the spectrum.” Read his interview in Multi-Housing News.
PROPERTY OF THE ISSUE
Cleveland warehouse
Hey investors, it’s our property of the month, defined by location and what’s on Loopnet (in other words, we don’t have any inside info or have a stake in said property).
Source.
Source.
Details: Affordable warehouse with the potential to rent other sections out. Parking behind the building behind fenced in yard. Move-in ready warehouse and manufacturing space at an affordable rate. Renovated offices on the first floor with a new kitchen. The second-floor call center could be converted to overnight housing possibilities. Learn more here.
COMING SOON
Interviews with architects, developers, and designers on their adaptive reuse and historic preservation projects!
Have a project in the works? Send me info here. Stay cool.