Tuesday, July 10, 2007

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 Like old times - Roanoke.com
 
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 Wednesday, July 11, 2007E-mail story  (Related) RSS feeds  (Related)  RSS Like old times A Roanoke advertising agency is asking for help to restore its '30s-era digs to their original glory.

  By Matt Chittum  (Related) 

  981-3331

 A picture is worth 500 bucks.

 If it's the right one, and if you get it to the new owners of the old Double Cola building at 701 Patterson Ave. near downtown.

 Access, a Roanoke advertising and public relations firm, is moving into the building, which was built in 1930 as a Buick dealership, and is hoping to restore its exterior to its long lost original appearance.

 Trouble is, the firm doesn't know exactly what it used to look like.

 So Access is putting out the call for any old photos -- even if your grandma or your Uncle Jedediah are in the foreground -- of the place as it originally looked in the 1930s and '40s.

 The first detailed photo of the front and east side of the building wins $500. If more than one picture comes in the same week, the firm will choose a winner based on clarity, perspective and date of origin.

 "With no pictures, we're really just kind of guessing," said Jacqueline Mayrosh of Spectrum Design, the project manager and structural engineer for Access' renovation.

 Todd Marcum, president of Access, and his colleagues haven't been able to turn up much on their own, just a single picture of an old streetcar that shows a small portion of the building front in the background. They've found ads for Enfield Motors and Blue Ridge Motors, the companies that occupied the building early on, but none with a picture.

 Access bought the building for $265,000 as a new home for its business, which is currently overfilling an older home on Memorial Avenue. The firm moved into the building in 2000 when it had four employees. It's now up to more than a dozen. The summer intern works from a laptop in the office kitchen.

 The building on Patterson will offer the firm 9,000 square feet for offices, plus 7,000 square feet below the building for a secure parking area. Marcum figures that's all the space the firm will ever need.

 "We're only planning on doing this once," he said.

 There's lots of work to be done, inside and out.

 The building was a dealership until the 1950s, when it was transformed into a bottling plant first for orange soda, and in 1960 for Double Cola. Philip Malouf ran the plant until he retired and sold it in 1988. Malouf died in 2001.

 The cleanup of the building, basically unused for nearly 20 years, was a chore. Workers, including Access employees and family members, found old Double Cola mementos everywhere, from bottle labels to crates to T-shirts, and removed more than 4 tons of scrap metal, Marcum said.

 They sold it for about $200. Nice folding cash, but nothing in the face of the renovation costs.

 Access is hoping to spend $500,000. "We're also being told that's not enough," Marcum said.

 The space that will become Access' offices is a cavernous, hangarlike room with concrete floors, exposed bowstring rafters and a barrel-vault roof -- a "blank palette," Marcum said.

 "It terrifies me," he said.

 The project will carry downtown Roanoke redevelopment to a new western frontier. City leaders have been working to accommodate renovation efforts west along Campbell and Salem avenues, where numerous old buildings are being converted to loft apartments, condominiums and retail spaces. Recently, the city helped create a Virginia landmarks registry district, which will allow property owners in the district to harness historic tax credits to aid in financing renovation projects.

 The old bottling plant is just outside that area, but that's not holding back Marcum and his business partner, Access chief executive officer Tony Pearman.

 "There is a little bit of urban pioneering there," Marcum said. "It's not an uncomfortable place. I have a lot of confidence in the neighborhood."

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