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South Marshall Street / Brookstown Projects


Danny 4 Peace

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One of my favorite neighborhoods. I have watched it change over the years. I grew up in nearby Washington Park and rode my bike as a kid into downtown through Brookstown Heights. It has changed so much since the mid 80's. The rowhouses built in 1987 had other NC cities looking at them as an idea. Charlotte built theirs in the mid 90's after studying those 1987 rows in Winston-Salem's Brookstown Heights. The 1987 rows in Brookstown Heights were modeled after the moravian revival originals that use to be there before urban renewal took them in the 1950's.

Changes to area improve its image

Old mill community adding developments

By Victoria Cherrie

JOURNAL REPORTER

Fifteen years ago, the old mills and buildings along South Marshall Street were nothing more than dilapidated havens for vagrants and crime.

Today, many of them have been restored into offices and condominiums as new growth fills the Brookstown Heights area next to Old Salem just south of downtown's core.

"This neighborhood essentially is being rebuilt," said Mike Prince, a partner in the Beau Dancy Construction Co.

The company began developing a community of town houses between Old Salem and Brookstown Avenue in 1987. The town houses are near the former Indera Mills complex on South Marshall Street, which Beau Dancy, the company's owner, refurbished last year into several offices and condos called the Mill at Tar Branch.

The development has increased traffic in the area. The $5 million Children's Museum of Winston-Salem is nearly complete and scheduled to open Nov. 20 at the corner of Brookstown Avenue and Liberty Street. Wake Forest University Health Sciences is building its new Piedmont Dialysis Center a few blocks to the west.

"You wouldn't believe what this area looked like then compared to now," said Derrick Davis, the owner of an employee benefits and securities firm and a self-made developer. He and his son, Chad Davis, the president of East Coast Capital Inc., own and have restored many of the old buildings in the Brookstown area.

They also helped develop One Salem Tower, an office building that brought people back to work in the neighborhood 15 years ago.

Dancy is continuing his work in getting people to live there.

By next spring, residents will move from their houses in Ardmore and Buena Vista into Tar Branch Towers, a four-story building across from Ollie's Bakery with 24 condominiums and a 5,000-square-foot restaurant below.

The building includes a penthouse with a wide veranda that overlooks the campus of the N.C. School of the Arts. The school bought the condominium for the chancellor's home.

The developers have sold 16 of the 24 condos. The interior work will begin in the next few weeks, Dancy said.

One of the project's goals was for the building, with its wide square towers, to fit into the architecture of the area, said Rence Callahan, the principal architect at Walter Robbs Callahan & Pierce Architects, which is designing the project.

Dancy looked at the bricks of nearby buildings to closely match the Tar Branch project, he said.

He and Prince said they are still recruiting a restaurant for the lower floor, and they have had both local and out-of-town inquiries. The space has a large outdoor patio facing Wachovia Street.

"I can already see how it will look," Dancy said.

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I've always heard it as simply Brookstown; not Brookstown Heights. The generic Heights generally implies a higher area overlooking something, but as I recall Brookstown is in the gradually sloping are from Fifth Street southward and downward through Old Salem to Salem Creek before it begins to climb again toward the Konoak area? Just curious.

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Part of it is low but the residential areas are higher such as Cherry Street. It was an old upscale street of large houses connecting both Salem and Winston during the victorian days before the two merged. The factories are in the low spots in Brookstown Heights where their owners could look down on them from their large houses.

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  • 1 year later...

some details from the DWSP.org news letter:

DANCY REAL ESTATE has announced a new downtown project that will consist of 39 residential condominiums and 16,750 s.f. of office condominiums. Located at 248 South Main at Cemetery Street, the residential units will range in size from 1140 to 3420 s.f. with a price range of $227,000 to $854,000. The office space will sell for $150/s.f. with $35/s.f. for upfitting. Two levels of underground parking are

included in the project along with storage space on top of the building. Call Beau Dancy or Mike Prince at 725-0106.

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If I recall correctly, that was the location of a home that was being restored a few years ago but burned down due to worker error.

Until I see the drawings, I do not know if this structure is the most appropriate one for that location. It seems totally out of place compared to the single family dwellings in the immediate vicinity.

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Knowing Beau, he has a tendency to make his projects blend in witht the surrounding area. So the best we could see would be a midrise at about 3-5 stories with an ALL brick facade that will blend in with the adjacent single family homes and the city's first firehouse/city hall. I know he will do it right!

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There are pics and more info about this project at the follwing site:

http://winstonsalemskyscrapers.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=1

I went to the linked site and it looks decently informative but I wonder if having another forum site is a good thing. The number of people interested in the going ons in the Triad and willing to be active participants in discussion about them is small and having more of these sites will dilute the discussion potential. People only have so much time to read forums and post to them. This Urbanplanet subforum I have noticed has been declining a bit in the number of posts in the last several weeks. If there is some sort of consenus where discussion of such topics should be hosted I will be there but one forum is all I can handle right now.

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I went to the linked site and it looks decently informative but I wonder if having another forum site is a good thing. The number of people interested in the going ons in the Triad and willing to be active participants in discussion about them is small and having more of these sites will dilute the discussion potential. People only have so much time to read forums and post to them. This Urbanplanet subforum I have noticed has been declining a bit in the number of posts in the last several weeks. If there is some sort of consenus where discussion of such topics should be hosted I will be there but one forum is all I can handle right now.

I agree. I noticed that there was no information posted on Winston-Salem over the past few weeks on

this site and also skyscraperpage.com. I just came across this site from a linked posted on skyscraperpage.com this morning. Not my idea, but I do understand where your coming from.

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I think it is great that Dancy is expanding downtown development south of 40. I would like to see him incorporate the building on the corner of Liberty and Cemetery. It's a great old commercial building and about the only one that still exists south of 40. Are there any renderings of his proposal? Does anyone know who the architect is?

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The 97,000-square-foot building will face South Main Street and will be built in much the same way as Dancy's other downtown projects, Tar Branch Towers and the Mill at Tar Branch, which sit just west of the site of the new project. Only two of the 27 units at Tar Branch Towers remain unsold, and all 30 units at Mill at Tar Branch have been sold.

In all, downtown Winston-Salem has a total of about 800 condo units either existing or planned, according to Business Journal research.

"I've really been impressed with what's going on downtown," Dancy said. "Trader's Row (a mixed-use office and condominium project on Trade Street) has already sold out. We've yet to finish a unit before it's been sold. Compared to other municipalities of similar size, we've yet to even begin to tap into the residential market."

Given the success of these similar condo projects, it looks like that this project should do quite well.

With so many units in close proximity to each other, there is also a crying need for some retail in the immediate area. There are a few restatuarants and a bakery but I think the closest gas/retail store is some distance away near Broad St I think.

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  • 3 months later...

Given the success of these similar condo projects, it looks like that this project should do quite well.

With so many units in close proximity to each other, there is also a crying need for some retail in the immediate area. There are a few restatuarants and a bakery but I think the closest gas/retail store is some distance away near Broad St I think.

There's Piedmont Music Center next door and there used to be some antique stores in the immediate area.

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you can see a rendering of the project here. thanks DaAchiever.

different reports have different floor counts. it ranges from 6 - 9. i guess we will see soon.

Do you know who the architect is? I know Beau Dancy used Walter Robbs Callahan & Pierce for the Tar Branch project. The architecture of the building leaves a lot to be desired - it's too safe and 1980s postmodern, but then again, it's rare that good architecture is built in the Triad.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Tar Branch Towers lands an upscale restaurant...

"...Dan Bowers, Trevor Dye and Mark Grohman are opening a nonsmoking, fine-dining restaurant called Meridian (no association with Meridian Commercial Real Estate close by). It will occupy 4,800 square feet of space at Tar Branch, with seating inside for about 150 and 50 more on the patio. The cuisine will have a North Italian/Southern French flair and will be prepared in an open cooking area so that patrons can share in the culinary experience..."

link

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