Downtown Winston-Salem Partnership hopes developers can finally get a revitalization plan off the ground
By Michael Hewlett
JOURNAL REPORTER
Monday, January 24, 2005
(Graphic by Nicholas Weir)
Over the past few years, plans for downtown revitalization have moved forward. New restaurants have opened, and the Nissen Building is being transformed into apartments.
But on the south side of Fourth Street, the Pepper Building still stands vacant, a number of plans for it having fallen through in the past several years. Across from that building is the Old Courthouse, which has been vacant for more than a year since several county departments moved into the new Forsyth County Government Center.
After another recent attempt to redevelop the Pepper Building failed, officials at the Downtown Winston-Salem Partnership began to think big, and they are inviting developers to think big with them.
Redeveloping that section of downtown is a critical part of revitalization, said Lyons Gray, the president of the partnership.
"It's a signature of the core of our downtown," he said.
The partnership is preparing a statement of interest to send to developers in the next month. The partnership said it hopes to get ideas from developers on what to do with about 3 acres bounded by Main Street to the east, Fourth Street to the north, the downtown strollway to the west and Third Street to the south.
The area includes a parking lot owned by Piedmont Federal Savings & Loan Union that is behind the Pepper Building at the corner of Liberty and Third streets.
The idea came about after the collapse of plans by Trilogy Group LLC, which had planned to buy the Pepper Building and convert it for residential and commercial uses.
Before Trilogy came along, John Elkington, a Memphis businessman, was going to redevelop the building and anchor it with a 10,000-square-foot NASCAR Caf?. But those plans were abandoned.
Gray said that there are more questions than answers about how to develop all of the properties. "We may learn things we didn't know about," he said. "It's a very fluid process."
Last year, the Forsyth County Board of Commissioners approved an agreement with the partnership to study how to reuse the Old Courthouse.
On the latest idea, the partnership is working with Bob Brown, who Gray said helped draft the request for proposals for One Technology Place at the Piedmont Triad Research Park.
The Pepper Building is owned by the Downtown Winston-Salem Foundation, which is part of the Downtown Winston-Salem Partnership.
There also have been discussions with Piedmont Federal about the project, Gray said.
The partnership is involved with other efforts downtown. In 2003, the partnership revealed plans for a civic plaza that would include a public garden and a performance space among sidewalk cafes and other new businesses in an area bounded by Second, Fourth, Liberty and Cherry streets.
Those plans are slowly moving forward, but a major challenge is money, as the cost could be more than $25 million, Gray said.
Aspects of the civic plaza could be incorporated in this new plan, he said.
The new project would dovetail with plans by the city to tear down a building at 124-126 W. Fourth Street, and another small building behind it facing Third Street to make way for a parking lot. That lot would serve customers of shops and restaurants on Fourth Street.
Gray said that combined with the Nissen Building and the makeover of the Adam's Mark Winston Plaza Hotel into new Marriott and Embassy Suites hotels, "you're creating a real core of downtown, so it's an important project."
• Michael Hewlett can be reached at 727-7326 or at mhewlett@wsjournal.com
Edited by eddard, 24 January 2005 - 08:34 AM.
The tower is 250 feet.
