ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, March 3, 1996 TAG: 9603010017
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
If you ask any of the people living in one of downtown Roanoke's growing number of urban apartments what it's like, make sure you don't have to be anywhere when you do it.
These downtown dwellers have a tendency to rattle on (and on) about how wonderful it is, almost as though it's their duty. They are used to skepticisms being lobbed their way by suburbanites, and have a volley for just about every one.
There's a downside, but they tend to put that off until last.
``I'm like a self-appointed Chamber of Commerce representative for downtown,'' says Lacy LeGard, who lives with her 2-year-old son, Hunter, above Mr. Su's Restaurant on Campbell Avenue. She has fond memories of downtown from her childhood. So when she walked into the unfinished apartment and ran into the building's owner, Spanky Macher, she wrote him a deposit check on the spot.
``There's no place like it in the world,'' boasts her next-door neighbor, photographer Karl Phillips.
At the moment, there are 16 rental units in downtown and one luxury condominium that isn't for rent. Matt Kennell, executive director of Downtown Roanoke Inc., puts the total number of downtown living spaces at 39, but that figure includes 10 units in a rooming house on Campbell Avenue and 12 dorm rooms that Mill Mountain Theatre keeps for visiting performers.
Development of downtown living spaces has been slower than city and Downtown Roanoke Inc. officials would like, but Kennell says the relatively few people living among the office buildings and stores are helping to pave the way for their future neighbors. They are proving that you can live comfortably downtown.
Many of the newer spaces are hidden above businesses you might walk by every day. You'll find them spread from the City Market to Second Street Southwest, along Church Avenue and above Jefferson Street. About half have been renovated in the last four years. They run the architectural gamut from tiny efficiencies to high-ceilinged two-bedroom apartments to a rangy 2,300-square-foot penthouse. Rents are as low as $225 a month and as high as $650.
Of course, there have always been a few places to live in downtown. Photographer Greg Vaughn was living above his old studio on Campbell Avenue next to the Roanoke Plasma Co. more than 10 years ago, when ``about the only place to eat downtown was the Texas Tavern.''
Billy's Ritz restaurant was open then, too, and Dennis Kruger, another downtown residential pioneer, was living in an apartment in a building he bought next door to the restaurant on Salem Avenue. Kruger fell ill and died about a month ago - before he could really enjoy his new neighbors.
Like Vaughn and Kruger, this latest wave of pioneers is having to learn about urban living.
``There is nothing I need that I cannot find downtown except diapers for my son,'' LeGard said. Then she remembered later that Revco stocks those.
It's really a matter of getting adjusted to the way people used to live, before everything any consumer could want or need was under one roof at a mall or the Wal-Mart.
If she wants to make a fresh breakfast for herself and Hunter, LeGard hits Wertz's Country Store for eggs and bacon, the farmer's market for fruit, Mill Mountain Coffee & Tea for coffee, Brothers Bakery for bread and Mason & Hannabass for milk.
Phillips and his longtime girlfriend, Diane Grubbs, will tell you about other necessary adjustments. Like a train conductor reading a timetable, they can recite a list of annoying sounds and when they occur.
It starts at 11:30 p.m. when a flock of starlings usually congregates in the trees right outside their bedroom window on Campbell Avenue. Phillips usually shoos them away by hanging out his window and blasting them with a squirt gun or a camera flash.
Around midnight is trash pickup. Phillips has concluded that the city garbage trucks are actually driven by the guys hanging on the back of them yelling, ``Pull up, pull up, pull up. ... Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!''
The rest of the night is dotted with straggling revelers from Awful Arthur's Restaurant, and train whistles and street cleaners. Oddly enough, Phillips and Grubbs say the sound of bands playing at Awful Arthur's never seems to drift their way, nor does the smell of Oriental food from Mr. Su's below. On the upside, they've yet to have a pigeon find its way through an open window.
Regardless of the inconveniences, Phillips and Grubbs love where they live. They operate their business, Studios Ltd., right out of their two-bedroom apartment. She runs the modeling agency and he takes the pictures.
Phillips shoots right in the center of the cavernous main room of the apartment, with its 12-foot ceilings and fireplace with gas logs. In one corner is a kitchen area, with a high narrow table doubling as a makeup table and dining area. Huge studio lights are set up next to the couch.
He also shoots in the couple's bedroom, which is on the front of the building. It's dominated by a pair of 8-foot-high windows that warm the room with natural light.
``This Southern light is just great for photography,'' Phillips said. So are the city streets. Familiar downtown landmarks are behind the models in many of Phillips' pictures.
Convenient as it is, living and working and eating all on one city block can get stale.
``You like to get away every now and then,'' Phillips said. ``You always have that feeling.''
But is it|
a neighborhood?|
About two years ago, Roanoke City Councilman Mac McCadden found himself a single man again and in need of less living space, so he moved into a 1,100-square-foot apartment above Southern Title Insurance Co. at 25 W. Church Ave.
``Clubs were opening up and the nightlife was growing,'' he said. ``I really liked being in the center of everything.''
Ten years ago, McCadden notes, downtown was so barren that a tumbleweed wouldn't have seemed out of place. Now there's more going on, but still not that many people living downtown. And the apartments are fairly spread out. With so few neighbors, it couldn't feel much like a neighborhood, could it?
``The restaurateurs and the bartenders were my neighbors,'' McCadden said. ``The street people, too.''
Is it safe? McCadden said he ``never felt threatened downtown.``
LeGard, 31, a single mother raising a 2-year-old boy in this urban environment, echoes McCadden's feeling.
And she believes her son is better off for being raised downtown. He's getting exposed to people, culture - even restaurant etiquette.
``How could you be bored down here?'' she raves, reeling off a list of what Hunter can see within a few blocks of his bedroom. When she's not working as an office manager and bookkeeper, they hit the science, history and art museums. Hunter drinks Italian cream sodas at Mill Mountain Coffee & Tea while his mother has mug after mug of coffee. They lunch at the Roanoke Weiner Stand just like she did as a child with her father.
Every fireman on the B-shift at Station 1 on Church Avenue knows Hunter and Lacy, they visit so often.
``He can do about everything in there but drive the fire truck,'' LeGard says proudly.
McCadden has since moved out of downtown to a larger suburban home where his kids can visit him without being so cramped, but he doesn't regret his time downtown.
``I really enjoyed it. ... Everything I needed was there,'' he said. ``Except parking.''
City streets|
and stumbling blocks|
There are two things downtown dwellers point to almost without fail as the downsides of life in the central city: no parking and no cable television.
With most parking lots owned by Allright Parking or a downtown business, not much is left for residents except on-street parking. And most of that is one-hour parking except between 6 p.m. and 6 a.m.
If you oversleep, you might wind up with a $5 parking ticket to go with your breakfast. And if you don't work 9-to-5 hours - well, you're going to have problems.
``We had one guy who had something like $2,000 in tickets,'' said Jerry Howard, who, with his brother, operates Howard's Soup Kitchen and rents the three studio efficiency apartments above the restaurant. ``There's not a thing in the world I can do about it. You might as well rent you a [parking] space.''
He could provide a space for tenants, but that would mean higher rent.
There's a parking lot behind Macher's apartments on Campbell Avenue, where LeGard and Phillips leave their cars, but that is the exception.
Downtown Roanoke's Kennell said he's been in very preliminary negotiations with the city about resolving the problem, but no solution is close. On the table are ideas such as parking stickers to allow residents extended time on the streets and converting unused alleys to parking space.
When it comes to cable television, there's a quick fix - if you can afford it - but true cable television is a long way off.
Sharron Davies, community relations manager with Cox Cable Roanoke, says putting cable in downtown Roanoke would be both costly and inconvenient. It would involve digging up downtown streets to lay the cable. The cost just isn't worth it for the number of potential customers in the area.
One alternative, available from Cox, is Primestar, a sort of minisatellite system. That's the route McCadden took when he lived on Church Avenue. After a $200 installation fee, it costs about $1 a day.
Others just make adjustments. LeGard doesn't miss television, and thinks her son is better off for not being ``propped in front of `The Lion Kind' all day.'' She has a television, but it's tucked in a corner on a rolling stand. Her couch faces the fireplace.
Kennell said it is stumbling blocks like the parking and cable situations that have hampered residential development in downtown.
Some major proposed projects have fallen by the wayside in recent years. Developers Richard Kurshan and John Fulton's CityCenter Homes at Century Plaza, a set of condominiums in the $150,000 range to be built in a building at 10 Church Ave. S.E., never got off the ground floor. Fulton has said they ``took a bath'' on the idea and the property is now office space.
The parking garage on Church Avenue near the fire station has zoning for several floors of residential space to be added on top, but when the city put out a call for someone to develop it, only one bid came in.
Still, Kennell remains hopeful. In the ``post-department store era,'' he said, residential is the the top growth market for downtown areas in the country.
Downtown Roanoke Inc.'s job is to make downtown more livable. If it can solve problems like parking and cable television, downtown landlords can command higher rent, which will help attract more developers.
Though current rents aren't enough to warrant the cost of renovating old buildings for most developers, Kennell said, there are some plans for new projects.
Will Trinkle of C.W. Francis & Son Inc. has plans to put a pair of 2,000-square-foot apartments in the former WDBJ radio studios at 124 Kirk Ave. They'll feature 14-foot ceilings and on-site parking. He expects them to be done this summer, when he will move into one of them himself.
Downtown residential development may also get a boost in April and May from the Downtown Living Project, a design showcase under construction in historic buildings owned by architect David Hill at 120 and 122 Campbell Ave. S.W.
In an effort to show what downtown living spaces can look like and show how viable they are, architects and designers will set up temporary models. Proceeds from paid tours of the showcase will benefit the Arts Council of the Blue Ridge and other non-profit groups.
When the displays are taken down, most of the renovated space will become the offices of Hill's landscape architecture business.
Hill said he is also studying the possibility of including an apartment or two in the plans. He didn't intend to at first, but so many people inquired about it, he decided to at least look into it.
The next wave
If downtown rents get richer, so will the renters.
That's why Kennell believes the next wave of downtown dwellers will be a high-income crowd of people who will take urban apartments to go along with their country homes. Trinkle said he expects the same kind of tenant to be his neighbor on Kirk. Most of the people who inquired about apartments in Hill's buildings were also seeking that kind of setup.
Riding the crest of this next wave are Dr. Lee Tucker, chief pathologist at Community Hospital, and his wife, Mary Lynn. The Tuckers own a home in Franklin County, where they also own The Manor at Taylor's Store bed and breakfast. Tucker also is co-owner of Lee & Edwards Wine Merchants on Jefferson Street. Hidden discreetly on the third floor above the wine shop is an immaculate 2,300-square-foot apartment accessible only by elevator.
Tucker bought the building from another physician who already had renovated the apartment. All he had to do was tear out the shag carpet to expose the original 1910 pine floors and paint the 10-foot ceilings, the walls and the yard upon yard of elaborate carved moldings and columns.
``We're not roughing it up here,`` Tucker says, looking at his canyon-sized sunken whirlpool tub. He jokes that he's going to install a diving board at one end.
The Tuckers stay in the apartment less than half of their time, mainly when he's working late at the hospital or when they come to town for a cultural event, like a play at Mill Mountain Theatre.
He says it's nice to be able to have a late dinner and a few drinks and not have to worry about driving home. And it was especially nice during this snowy winter. It was more than once that the Tuckers got snowed in on Jefferson Street - by design.
``Right in the thick of [the blizzard], on Sunday night, we went out for a walk on the market in the snow,'' he recalled.
If there is a next wave of downtown dwellers, Tucker and his wife are it for the moment. Still, an urban culture is emerging - or re-emerging - in downtown Roanoke. And it seems to be here to stay.
LeGard, for one, doesn't plan to leave anytime soon. If it wasn't for wanting Hunter in another school system when the time comes, she says, ``I'd stay down here forever.''
LENGTH: Long : 260 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: DON PETERSEN. 1. Lee and Mary Lynn Tucker's downtownby CNBapartment (on left in photo at right) is on the third floor of a
building on Jefferson Street between Church and Kirk avenues. At
street level is their Lee & Edwards Wine Merchants store. 2. Lacy
LeGard and her son, Hunter, do some window-shopping near their
Campbell Avenue apartment. 3. Makeup artist Tiek Phillips looks on
as photographer Karl Phillips poses Emily Riffee in his downtown
living room-studio. 4. Diane Grubbs (left) runs a modeling and
talent agency from one of the bedrooms of her City Market apartment;
her longtime boyfriend, Karl Phillips, has his photography studio
set up in the living room. 5. Physician Lee Tucker (below) and his
wife, Mary Lynn, reach their third-floor Jefferson Street apartment
by elevator. 6. Lacy LeGard and her son, Hunter, 2, watch the street
life from window seats as they take a break at Mill Mountain Coffee
& Tea on Campbell Avenue at the Roanoke City Market. It's a
convenient place to stop, since they live upstairs just a couple of
doors away. color. Graphic. Map. color.