HUNTINGTON -- So close.
The electric and the plumbing are ready, the drywall is up and downtown Huntington's second effort to provide new downtown housing, 9th Street Flats in the old Keen Jewelers building, is expected to finish up this spring.
Two of the loft-style condos are already sold, and two will be put on the market in April, said Joe Randolph, a member of Commodore Holding LLC, a five-man group of young professionals who are taking on the project.
Designed by Commodore Holding member Nate Randolph of Edward Tucker Architects, the lofts will be Bohemian-style with exposed brick and duct work, similar to that of Le Cook Store on 3rd Avenue, which also was designed by Edward Tucker Architects.
The members originally hoped it would be finished by last fall, but are happy with how the condos are turning out.
"We're extremely excited about getting done," said Joe Randolph, branch manager with AG Edwards in Huntington. "Sometimes permitting takes longer, or contractors have other jobs, so there's a lag in construction. It's all about alignment -- sometimes you're on different people's timelines in getting things done that aren't part of what you're doing."
The smallest of the two condos still available is 1,500 square feet, and the largest is 1,700. The holding company hopes to sell them for $225,000 and $250,000, respectively. One has two bedrooms and two full baths, and the second has three bedrooms and two full baths. Both have a large front room and kitchen area with a pantry, washer and dryer, walk-in closets and Kohler plumbing. The floors will be hardwood and tile.
Though they're not finished yet, Brian Colander has already purchased one. He grew up in Chicago and came to Huntington three years ago to do a residency in optometry at the VA Hospital. He took a job there after his residency and now is looking to invest in a home in the area.
"I'm single, I'm 30 years old and a full-sized house is a little too much for me at this point in my life," Colander said. He likes the idea of easy access to downtown restaurants and entertainment, and that the condo will be new and modern. And he likes that a rooftop garden is planned.
"I can still have friends over for a barbecue," Colander said.
He initially heard about the condos because he's friends with the guys of Commodore Holding.
Joe Randolph said the members of the holding company hope "that with this development, other people can realize they can do it as well, and they need to develop their properties."
There's a huge amount of inventory in Huntington that could be developed, he added.
"We're not trying to take the world over, we're trying to develop a small piece of downtown Huntington and hope that other people can see that they can do it," Joe Randolph said.
St. James condos
As the Flats near completion, condos are still selling at the St. James building, which has led the way in constructing new downtown housing over the past couple years. The St. James had sold 34 of its 53 custom condos by early March. Seventeen of them were sold in 2007.
It still has a few two-bedrooms condos remaining and about 15 one-bedroom condos. Some purchasers are buying more than one, knocking out a wall and putting two together, said Realtor W.G. Bunch with Prudential, who has worked selling the St. James units.
The roughly 100-year-old, 12-story building along 10th Street between 4th and 5th avenues was bought by Swiss Capital Group of Florida in 2005, and its sales office opened in 2006. The bottom five floors are commercial space, and the sixth floor and up are residences, complete with a library, fitness center, sauna and spa and rooftop garden.
The condos are unique in that buyers get to choose their own cabinetry, appliances, carpet, paint and amenities.
Empty-nesters Laban and Edwina Young moved into the condos last fall from their house on two acres in Louisa, Ky.
Laban still works four days a week at his pharmacy in Louisa, but is enjoying the new life in Huntington, he said.
"We love it," he said. "We grew up in Louisa and lived in a ranch house in Louisa 28 years. The biggest surprise are the conveniences Huntington has over a suburb like Louisa."
He likes that he doesn't have to mow that two-acre lawn anymore, and his wife likes that she doesn't have to clean as many rooms these days. They selected modern amenities, and she keeps the decorative items sparse to minimize the hassles, Laban Young said.
"She doesn't want a lot of things to dust," he said. "Our home in Louisa looked like Cracker Barrel. ... (The condo) is very European, with sleek lines. The cabinets are modern. The furniture is modern. It was a 180 from our country home, which was fun for her. She got a kick out of designing."
Mary Lynne Simpson, 65, has lived in the St. James building a year, a fact that relieves her out-of-town children, who weren't comfortable with her living in an isolated house on a hill.
"I knew I'd be moving within five years because I had recently retired, and I stopped in to see the models on a whim," she said. "And I fell in love with them."
She has a "whole lot less cleaning and a whole lot less stuff," these days, said Simpson, who retired as an executive secretary at Cabell Huntington Hospital in 2005.
"The things on my walls, I enjoy them all the time, whereas before I only spent time in three rooms," she said. "I gathered together my most treasured things, and now I see them all the time."
She loves the rooftop garden.
"(When it was warm), I would go up there in the evening with a glass of wine and a book and feel like I was on top of the world," she said.
Simpson likes being downtown, too, where she can walk to the riverfront or the library whenever she likes. It's nice to get to know the workers at the downtown shops and bump into her neighbors at Starbucks.
"I think the more that takes place, living downtown will be even more advantageous than it is right now," she said. "There's not a lot of pleasure shopping. ...I'm hoping that when they do get more going on down there, they'll open some more retail stores."
Simpson reminisced back a few decades, to the height of Huntington's downtown retail offerings.
"My daughter and I would come down and poke around when she was little," she said. "We'd go to the library and to Bowinkles. We'd go to the dime store and Stone & Thomas. It was a nice outing to come downtown.
"If Huntington was like it used to be and they had the condos, it would be heaven."
Future projects
Dr. Joseph Touma, who owns 901, 905 and 911 3rd Ave., has worked with architects to design lofts for his properties across from Pullman Square. But Touma said the project is still in the budget planning and feasibility stages.
"There are no definite plans at the present," he said, though he said there may be a more definite announcement later this spring.
Gary Pommerenck has hopes to put lofts atop Love's Hardware. He's worked with the Huntington-Ironton Empowerment Zone on efforts to increase the size of the city's historic district as a way of attaining tax credits.
The Love's building would rent out one-bedroom lofts at 1,200 square feet and two-bedroom lofts 1,600 to 1,800 square feet.
Pommerenck was moving on the project, but said he hit a roadblock. He had been working on the financing with a company in Charlotte, which was combining the Love's project with another West Virginia developer's project. It dropped the Love's project last month.
"I'm working with another bank and they're trying to put some feelers out for who else does this type of work," Pommerenck said.
It's still a great project though, Pommerenck said of the lofts, which would be across 10th Street from Pullman Square and have a view of Pullman and the Ohio River.
"I think it's a matter of finding somebody who wants to be a limited partner with us and get some historic tax credits," he said. "Twenty percent of the project is eligible for tax credits from federal government, and 10 percent is eligible from the state."
Beyond that, the planning is done, Pommerenck said. "Even the builder is picked out, the fixtures, subcontractors -- everything is ready to go if we can find somebody willing to be a limited partner and buy down the tax credits at a discount."
Meanwhile, the members of Commodore Holding hope to move on to another project as well, when they finish the current one. One problem with buying any property in the vicinity of the 9th Street Flats is that their development of the Keen Jewelers building has raised the neighboring property values.
Along with Joe Randolph and Nate Randolph, the holding company includes attorney Chad Barry, accountant Sean Wilson and Dr. Matthew Cordes of the Huntington VA Hospital, who has experience in the construction business.
Each member has different assets to bring to the table as they take on a project like this -- from the design standpoint, to the financing, the contracting and the legal aspects -- but they're learning as they go, Nate Randolph said.
"We learned a lot with this first project," he said. "The best way to learn is to do."
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