Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, September 12, 1995 TAG: 9509120064
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DAN CASEY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Without comment, City Council agreed 5-0 Monday to sell three of the four Trinkle buildings to the owners of Hill Studio, a downtown architecture and design firm that intends to move its offices into them.
The vote followed a closed-door meeting during which council was briefed on the deal.
David and Helen Hill, owners of the firm, will buy 120, 122 and 124 Campbell Ave. S.W. for $85,000 - $36,500 less than their assessed value.
Another party is negotiating for the purchase of the remaining building, 118 Campbell Ave. S.W., City Manager Bob Herbert said.
"We've been trying to sell these buildings for a long time," he said. "That particular block is a block ... that has had some difficulty. We're getting an active business, and we get this thing back in private property and paying taxes."
The deal caps more than six months of negotiations between the city's Economic Development Office and the Hills.
David Hill is a landscape architect who lists among his clients the National Park Service, which administers the Blue Ridge Parkway, and the Hotel Roanoke and Conference Center.
Helen Hill is a historic preservation planner. Among other things, she is spearheading efforts to win national historic landmark status for The Coffee Pot, a Brambleton Avenue Southwest bar and restaurant that is one of Roanoke's oldest watering holes.
Hill Studio is outgrowing its rented space at 20 E. Campbell Ave. and expects to be in the Trinkle buildings by mid-1996, David Hill said. The firm employs 14 people.
"We've done a lot of work [for clients] on how to design new uses for older buildings," David Hill said. "Here's one we're going to work in ourselves."
Combined, the three buildings will give Hill Studio about 13,000 square feet of space. It's possible that two apartments will be included in the final design, adding to the city's meager stock of downtown housing.
Hill said he expects to make an announcement next week of exactly how the buildings will be redeveloped. The total cost is expected to be well under $500,000, he said, but he declined to be more specific. The agreement requires the structures' facades be preserved.
The buildings are named after their former owner, James L. Trinkle, president of C.W. Francis & Sons. In the mid-1980s, he had planned to raze them for a parking lot.
Bowing to pressure from preservationists who consider them historically significant, the city bought the buildings from Trinkle in 1988 in a complicated cash-and-property swap that cost taxpayers $164,000.
The city also received a $100,000 grant from the state to preserve the buildings, which since have been placed on the National Register of Historic Places.
The city had intended to revamp the structures and install city offices in them, but it abandoned that plan in 1991 after cost estimates ballooned to $1.2 million.
Since then, a number of deals to sell the buildings to private businesses have fallen through. A proposed sale in 1992 to Roger Neel and Thomas Wallace for $120,000 went sour. And a New York photographer who had an option to buy 118 Campbell last year let it lapse.
Much of the block is an eyesore, and city officials have talked for years about ways to revive businesses along it.
Council was able to discuss the matter in private under an exemption to the state's Freedom of Information Act, which generally requires open meetings. Among other things, the act permits private briefings before sales of publicly owned property, but it does not require it.
by CNB