RACINE, Wis. (AP) - One of Downtown’s largest and most historic commercial buildings, the former Red Cross Drug Co., has been purchased by a local couple who plan to put new investment and life into the long-underutilized structure.
Husband and wife Andy Meyer and Chris Hefel of Racine closed on their $279,500 purchase of 314 Sixth St. last week, The Journal Times (https://bit.ly/2hPnBoC ) reported.
The building contains the equivalent of five storefronts, two of them occupied by the Sixth Street Theatre and one by the Racine Arts Council. The rest of the building is vacant.
The three-story building, constructed in about 1887, began as a YMCA, at least on the upper two floors, according to Hefel and the Racine Heritage Museum. Later tenants included the Knights of Pythias, a benevolent fraternal organization; and Red Cross Drug Co. which had at least the two western first-floor storefronts.
Those two storefronts have been vacant for years, and finding good commercial tenants for them is the highest priority, Hefel said. She is most interested in landing a restaurant for one of them.
The structure was evidently built to make a grand architectural statement, with decorative exterior flourishes, ceilings that are at least 14 feet high on all three floors, several skylights and at least one fireplace that remains.
“We really want to preserve, protect and bring it back to life,” Hefel said. “We want to get the street-level spaces rented with services we need.”
Hefel and Meyer said reclaiming and filling the entire, 24,000-square-foot building with tenants will take at least five years and perhaps an additional $500,000. The couple intend to do as historically respectful a renovation as possible, Hefel said.
The City of Racine’s website lists the building’s condition as “very poor.” The second and third floors are full of peeling paint, cracked plaster, Styrofoam drop ceilings and walls that were obviously added later to form oddly partitioned spaces and that will eventually need to be torn out.
However, Downtown Racine Corp. Executive Director Devin Sutherland praised previous owner Emily Hill of Milwaukee and her family for supporting the arts while also preserving the building’s basic integrity. For example, it was re-roofed a few years ago, and other exterior maintenance also has been done.
“Mrs. Hill deserves some credit . she’s done a lot to keep the bones of that building in great shape,” Sutherland said.
He said the prospect of seeing new life injected into the building is “very exciting.”
“I am delighted to hear that somebody is going to make use of an old building and find a good use for it,” Preservation Racine President Don Schumacher said.
Local architect Bob Hartmann pointed out the building was constructed on the site of the short-lived Blake Opera House. The Queen Anne-style YMCA was designed by James Gilbert Chandler, a well-known Racine architect, and constructed of Cream City brick with red sandstone and terra cotta trim.
Its internal gem is the 50-by-70-foot room that was first a gymnasium and later converted to a ballroom when the building was owned by the Knights of Pythias, according to Hefel. The room’s ceiling, about 20 feet high, is crowned by a large dome.
Hefel said they envision making use of the ballroom by creating an event space that would occupy a large portion of the second floor, in a second phase of redeveloping the building. That would still leave room for a couple of market-rate apartments on that floor and eventually, in a later phase, the creation of more apartments on the third floor for a total of about nine.
The new owners plan to install a new heating/cooling system, new plumbing, and an elevator in the building’s northwest corner.
Meyer and Hefel also bought the surface parking lot at the northwest corner of College Avenue and Sixth Street which could serve future apartment tenants.
“We got the building for a good price, so we think we can keep the rents pretty affordable,” Hefel said.
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Information from: The Journal Times, https://www.journaltimes.com
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