5 replies to this topic

[FortWorthology]

This is a project I've been looking forward to for some time. The old Sawyer Grocery Store on South Main, near the Axis club, is at last getting restored and redeveloped. Work is underway now on the two buildings to convert them to apartments over retail.

South Main Village was the hardest-hit neighborhood of Fort Worth South during suburban flight of the '60s and '70s.  The neighborhood, which is the area along South Main immediately south of downtown, has been vacant and decaying for decades.  Now, though, the city and developers are starting to come back.  A trendy club called Axis has opened in one of the historic buildings, some others have been restored for office use, others are marked for redevelopment, and there are rumors of even bigger projects in the works.

Here is a recent photo of the Sawyer buildings - they actually look *better* in this photo than they have in a long time. You can see the work going on through the windows when you go by.



The buildings will feature four retail spaces and 14 apartments. They are being redeveloped by Eddie Vanston of the Carillon Group, the same fine folks who gave us the beautiful, high-quality restorations of three other Fort Worth South historic properties - the Leuda-May Apartments, the Markeen Apartments (now condos), and the LaSalle Apartments, located in the district's Leuda-May, Jennings/Daggett/near-South Main Village, and Fairmount neighborhoods, respectively.

This is what they'll look like when complete:

Edited by FortWorthology, 03 September 2007 - 09:13 PM.

[krazeeboi]

It will look very traditional when finished, which is a good thing. Old school urbanity at its finest.

[FortWorthology]

krazeeboi, on Sep 3 2007, 10:28 PM, said:

It will look very traditional when finished, which is a good thing. Old school urbanity at its finest.

Eddie does a top-notch job on all of his projects.  My girlfriend lives in the LaSalle Apartments that he restored, and the work done there was remarkable.  They were in terrible shape when he bought them, and they're now picture-perfect restorations of their original 1928 appearance.  Basically, Eddie goes through and installs completely modern plumbing, wiring, and HVAC, then does everything else by either restoring the original fittings/fixtures/components or making replicas of them off the remaining originals and of the same materials.  The end result is really like walking back to the '20s or '30s, but with the addition of completely modern living standards.

He told me he refuses to work on newer buildings or design brand-new ones, because the quality isn't there.  He loves to restore old buildings because of the outstanding build and design quality, so he goes through and reworks & reopens classic pre-war urban structures in Fort Worth South.

To give an idea - here's the Markeen project from 1910, basically the only surviving Prairie School multifamily structure remaining in urban Fort Worth.  Before:











After:







Restored exterior:

[krazeeboi]

Wow, that's an awesome job.

[FortWorthology]

The progress made on the Sawyer buildings is nothing short of remarkable:







The work's not even finished yet, and they already look like brand-new buildings.  Amazing restoration work thus far.  Eddie Vanston does it again.

Did a write-up about the Sawyer project on West and Clear:

http://westandclear....-grocery-store/

[krazeeboi]

Wow, that's already impressive. Can't wait to see the finished product.