ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1995, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, December 11, 1995 TAG: 9512110035
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MARY BISHOP STAFF WRITER
WILL THERE ever be a Cafe Naturel or a Fruit, Nuts & Berries Cafe in downtown Roanoke? The design students hope so; we'll have to wait and see.
As one old downtown Roanoke building after another gets snapped up and renovated, few are getting the attention commanded by the historic Trinkle buildings on Campbell Avenue.
The old storefronts housed this newspaper in its early years and sheltered the John M. Oakey funeral home; the Red, White and Blue Cafe; the Davis Photo Co.; and other businesses over the past century.
All semester, Virginia Tech interior design students have been swarming over 120, 122 and 124 W. Campbell Ave., producing in-depth proposals for how they should be restored by new owners David and Helen Hill of Hill Studio.
In coming months, the Hills plan to move their architecture and design company from a block east on Campbell into 120 and 122 W. Campbell. They also intend to create third-floor apartments in those buildings and will decide later what to do with 124 W. Campbell.
Forty-two students - enough for several good-sized design firms - donned tailored suits and silk dresses and showed off their ideas at the Jefferson Club last week to a jury composed of some of the region's best-known design professionals, preservationists and downtown advocates.
Right down to carpet and wallpaper samples, the Tech seniors' design boards promoted a sophisticated future for the rundown old buildings that the city and state have been trying to preserve for years.
The Hills paid $85,000 for the three Trinkle buildings this year and expect to spend many times that amount to remodel them. Another Trinkle property at 118 W. Campbell is still for sale.
The Victorian-era buildings, built between 1892 and 1909 and listed in the National Register of Historic Places, were named for their former owner, the late James L. Trinkle, president of the real estate firm of C.W. Francis & Sons.
The students have climbed throughout the structures in recent weeks, reaching through cobwebs on the third floors to measure the walls (not quite plumb) and figuring out everything from the location of the old plumbing to the acoustics and available light at all hours of the day. They interviewed employees of Hill Studio to learn what they do, what kinds of work spaces they want and the dimensions of all current furniture and equipment.
Though the public may think of interior designers as arrangers of furniture and selectors of colors, designers also wrestle with budgets, indoor air quality, fire safety and building codes, interior wall and stairway designs, utilities and hundreds of other details, said Tech assistant professor Lennie Scott-Webber.
Some of the students' reports on building specifications and history contained more than 200 pages. For their near-professional presentations, their elaborate design boards covered the walls and hallways of one end of the Jefferson Club.
They had separate plans for Hill Studio's spaces, apartments and a potential cafe. Sally Rugaber, a past president of the Arts Council of the Blue Ridge, was among the jurors. She and her husband, Roanoke Times publisher Walter Rugaber, hope to rent an apartment at 120 Campbell, once the offices of the newspaper.
Students designed cafes with such names as Cafe Naturel; Fruit, Nuts & Berries; and the Red, White and Blue Cafe - the last being the name of a restaurant on the block many years ago. Hill said no cafe is planned for now.
Whether the Hills use the students' recommendations remains to be seen, but David Hill said the students suggested changes he wouldn't have considered. He said he will consider them now.
When Scott-Webber asked Hill to let the students study his firm and his new properties, he remembered a similar hands-on project he'd undertaken as a student. He and classmates at Harvard University's Graduate School of Design journeyed to Albuquerque, N.M., to draft proposals for properties there - real-life lessons that taught him far more than ordinary textbook exercises.
The jurors generally praised the Tech students' work.
"The level of the design seems to be really quite high," said architect David Bandy of the Marion architectural firm of Echols-Sparger & Associates and formerly of Sherertz, Franklin, Crawford, Shaffner Inc. of Roanoke.
The feedback was welcomed. "This will be our portfolio, basically," said Amy Lattimer, 21, of Warwick, N.Y. "This is what we'll be presenting when we go look for jobs in the spring."
LENGTH: Medium: 85 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: CINDY PINKSTON/Staff. Ryan Mayton, a senior interiorby CNBdesign major at Virginia Tech, explains his vision for the Trinkle
buildings to landscape architect Laura Orrison at the Jefferson
Club. Graphic: Map by staff. color.