GREENSBORO, N.C. (AP) - Andy Zimmerman is working with a sense of history to create downtown’s future.
He prefers not to call himself a developer but a “place maker” as he leads a tour of the Gateway Building at 620 S. Elm St. - formerly the home of a major denim factory 100 years ago.
Zimmerman is investing $5 million to take the 109,000-square-foot building from a dark, post-industrial warren into airy, light and open offices that will be a “hub” for innovative companies and people who think differently about how and where they work.
“I’m going to be pretty selective,” he said.
With a target opening date of July, Zimmerman is working quickly to sign major tenants.
The building has had two lives, first as an industrial plant and later as an office building.
Zimmerman wants this space, which housed the Hudson Hill Overall Co., later named Blue Bell, to be an engaging campus-like setting that will attract and nurture creative people through a district he is slowly building from West Lewis Street to Gate City Boulevard.
He wants the building - actually a combination of two built in 1918 and the 1930s - to be a place where workers will want to come and stay.
It’s by far his largest project, but something he’s been working toward with his rehabbing of smaller buildings dotted around downtown. He also can point to a similar success story: the renovation of the 100-year-old Revolution Mill into apartments and office space.
He’s already practiced innovation with HQ Greensboro, a place on West Lewis Street that houses 11,000 square feet of open offices and private areas for small companies looking to share a workspace. Because it’s full, Zimmerman is going to open more HQ space in his Gate City Building, about 9,000 square feet of it.
Pathways will link outside areas with the Lewis Street district.
Zimmerman will build three patios, one for each floor, so people can be outdoors as often as the weather allows. That’s quite a contrast from the days when the plant’s industrial owners bricked up the windows, he said, to keep workers focused on their jobs instead of outside.
He spent some of the past 18 months taking cinderblocks and bricks away from the steel-framed windows, replacing more than 1,000 panes.
The showplace of the building is the third floor where Zimmerman pushed aside mesh and concrete ceilings to find a vaulted roof with exposed natural wood and intricate steel work that is 24 feet tall at its peak.
He’s working hard to recruit something he considers central to his vision: a market or general store for the 1930s-era building, which parallels Bain Street.
The city is already planning to do its part by repaving the narrow Bain Street, which is more an alley of cracked concrete right now.
Of late, crews work in every corner of the building installing new wiring and plumbing.
But it won’t all be new. In addition to the steel windows and roof trusses, Zimmerman is preserving the glowing maple wood floors on the third level and the tiny gray and white tiles that decorate bathroom floors in parts of the building.
After a quick tour it’s back on the job for the developer.
“I do a lot of rolling my sleeves back,” he said. “I’m very involved in the process.”
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Information from: News & Record, http://www.news-record.com
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