Picture an old building, vacant and falling into disrepair. Such a building may have once been the focal point of its neighborhood.
For architects and city planners, the challenge often is to turn these structures into buildings that meet the changing needs of the surrounding area.
The term bandied about today for such an effort is “adaptive re-use”-making an old building functional again while maintaining its traditional character.
“A lot of times these old buildings can’t be saved,” said Patrick Anthony Roy, an Englishtown, N.J., architect with experience in renovating old structures. “The bottom line is cost. But I feel there should be an attempt to save a building or else we’ll live in isolation from our history.”
That philosophy was present in the making of Providence Square, a former cigar factory in New Brunswick that was reopened in May 1994 as a 98-unit apartment building for people age 62 and older.
“When a building becomes dilapidated, it’s depressing for the whole community,” said Richard Barnhart, president of Philadelphia-based Pennrose Properties Inc., which developed the property. “The beauty of renovated buildings is that they do a lot of good for the community.”
During its heyday as a cigar factory, the 90-year-old building was an important source of jobs for New Brunswick. After cigar operations ceased in 1945, a variety of other manufacturing roles followed until the building became empty in the early 1990s.
The city approved the site for seniors’ housing in 1990, but financial hassles delayed plans for several years. The $11 million project finally opened in May 1994 and was financed in part through a mix of city, bank and federal government money. Today, the apartment building is fully rented, with subsidized rents that cost tenants from $375 to $400.
As with many renovation projects, Providence Square posed some architectural challenges. Support columns throughout the building’s frame made it impossible to create rooms of equal size on each side of the corridor.
The architects-Westmont-based Kitchen and Associates-devised rooms with different dimensions. Eleven floor plans exist in the four-story, 92,000-square-foot structure.
The columns also made it impossible to build a suitable open space area to house activities for residents. Pennrose Properties built an addition that expanded the original structure by about 15 percent and closely matched the original red brick exterior.
“Possibly 60 percent of our work has been renovating and restoring historic buildings,” Barnhart said. “Matching old and new brick isn’t a big problem for us.”
The cigar factory is an example of the slew of abandoned industrial buildings that make New Jersey’s urban areas fertile ground for renovation projects, said Ronald Bertone, a partner with the Woodbridge architectural firm of Bertone-Sclare Associates and former president of the New Jersey Society of Architects.
“But they don’t come gold-plated,” he said. “There are a lot of problems associated with them.”
One concern is addressing environmental cleanup issues. Another is not destroying the historical nature of buildings on the National Register of Historic Places. And then there’s the matter of building codes.
“A building’s outside walls and roof that were designed many years ago don’t meet today’s (building) codes,” Bertone said.
Meeting fire code regulations required careful planning in converting a Red Bank building that once housed the Sigmund Eisner Company, a maker of military uniforms from the turn of the century to 1956.
Rumson-based developer Soulis International Realty Inc. renovated the building, now known as the Galleria retail and office complex.
The Galleria is a series of six linked buildings, some with two floors and some with four floors. For Elaine Sourlis, who did most of the project’s design work, the main challenge was connecting the structure’s common areas to make the buildings flow into each other. She worked with the local fire marshal and two architects-Stanley Brittman in Holmdel and Patrick Gilvary in Red Bank-to accomplish this while meeting the proper fire standards.
The Galleria, Bertone said, “has been one of the contributing factors to the revitalization of Red Bank.”
Sourlis and her husband, Theodore, bought the old red brick factory in 1984. They studied other buildings built about the same time as the uniform factory and how they were adapted to new uses. They decided to accentuate many of the building’s original features, such as its exposed interior brick walls, wood floors and high ceilings with solid wood beams.
“It’s not your conventional office space,” Elaine Sourlis said. “The wonderful play of light and space gives it the feeling of a New York City loft. It’s an upscale environment in a very understated setting.”
The office of First Option Health Plan is an example of working within the confines of the Galleria’s frame. Existing cement columns in that space were accented with arched facades to create a gallery feel. Office files sit between the columns to provide more space around people’s desks.
The Galleria offers 80,000 square feet of usable space evenly split between retail and office use. Office space is fully rented, while retail space is about 90 percent leased. The first of the building’s 32 tenants moved in during late 1991; the rest came during the next three years. The Sourlis’ are renovating space to house a 16-shop “antique village” they hope to open by the end of the year, which would give the building 100 percent occupancy.
The Sourlises financed the Galleria’s renovation themselves, and say they haven’t yet determined the total cost. Rents average about $16 to $17 per square foot.
Old factories are just one source for renovation work. Thomas Black, an economist with the Urban Land Institute in Washington, said office and retail space also demand attention.
As companies downsize and more people work from home, office space becomes available, Black said. As it becomes available, companies move to better office spaces, leaving their old office space available for possible conversion.
“It’s mainly happening in downtown areas, but it’s also occurring in older suburban areas as well,” Black said, who said that some cities are finding ways to convert this office space into residential use.
Then there’s the problem of empty storefronts as “mom-and-pop” retailers fall prey to the so-called “Wal-Martization” of America.
“It’s still too early to say what the trend in retail (renovation) is, ” Black said. Nonetheless, he noted some retail space has been converted to recreational and entertainment concepts that vary from upscale pool halls to night spots.
No matter the source, though, too much renovation of vacant or underused space isn’t always a good sign, Black said.
“It means that some economic activity is shifting away from the community,” Black said. “But if properly done, renovations can pump money back into the community through increased tax revenues and jobs creation.”
That was a goal of Edward Trujillo, the owner and developer of Raritan Renaissance, a former theater that was renovated into a 40-unit senior citizen apartment building in Perth Amboy.
Trujillo, a resident of Perth Amboy, said that roughly 70 of his sub- contractors are from that city.
