The 109-year-old building has been boarded up along Broad Street for years. (Mike Platania photos)
A vacant Arts District building is set to get new life thanks in part to one of the city’s busier architects, who’s once again donning his developer cap.
Walter Parks is leading a group that’s preparing to renovate 2-4 E. Broad St. into over a dozen apartments, plus commercial space. The three-story building faces the corner of Broad and Foushee streets and is currently unoccupied.
Parks, whose namesake architecture firm is based just down the block on Adams Street, said that for the 20 or so years he’s been in the neighborhood, 2-4 E. Broad St. has largely sat unused.
“At this point, it’s the worst building on the block. When we’re done it’ll be one of the best,” Parks said. “It’ll be a great way to bring the feel of a neighborhood up.”
Walter Parks (Photo courtesy Scott Elmquist/Style Weekly)
Parks and his unnamed business partners bought 2-4 E. Broad St. in 2022 for $500,000 and are now preparing a historic tax-credit renovation of the 17,000-square-foot structure.
Once complete, it’ll house 14 apartments and a commercial space, which Parks said could become an office suite. Other than some water damage at the time of purchase, Parks said the 109-year-old building is in good shape.
“The bones are really, really good,” he said. “The quality of the wood floors is much nicer than what you’ll find today, and the volume of space…we don’t usually build 12-foot ceilings in apartments in new construction.”
Work is expected to begin in the late summer or early fall, and a 10-month buildout will follow. UrbanCore Construction is the project’s general contractor.
Parks is also working on developing more apartments south of the river.
In the spring Parks was part of a group that received city approval to build a five-story, 60-apartment building at 1401-1407 Hull St. in Manchester. Parks said they’re working on finalizing financing for that development and hope to have construction underway by spring 2025.
Parks’ architecture practice, Walter Parks Architects, is one of the busiest local firms in the multifamily sector. It has designed new-construction apartment buildings like Manchester’s South Falls tower and the nearly-complete Parkline townhomes in the Fan. It’s also been the architect of numerous adaptive reuse developments around the city, including the apartment conversions of both the former LaDiff furniture building and the Mutual Building.
The 109-year-old building has been boarded up along Broad Street for years. (Mike Platania photos)
A vacant Arts District building is set to get new life thanks in part to one of the city’s busier architects, who’s once again donning his developer cap.
Walter Parks is leading a group that’s preparing to renovate 2-4 E. Broad St. into over a dozen apartments, plus commercial space. The three-story building faces the corner of Broad and Foushee streets and is currently unoccupied.
Parks, whose namesake architecture firm is based just down the block on Adams Street, said that for the 20 or so years he’s been in the neighborhood, 2-4 E. Broad St. has largely sat unused.
“At this point, it’s the worst building on the block. When we’re done it’ll be one of the best,” Parks said. “It’ll be a great way to bring the feel of a neighborhood up.”
Walter Parks (Photo courtesy Scott Elmquist/Style Weekly)
Parks and his unnamed business partners bought 2-4 E. Broad St. in 2022 for $500,000 and are now preparing a historic tax-credit renovation of the 17,000-square-foot structure.
Once complete, it’ll house 14 apartments and a commercial space, which Parks said could become an office suite. Other than some water damage at the time of purchase, Parks said the 109-year-old building is in good shape.
“The bones are really, really good,” he said. “The quality of the wood floors is much nicer than what you’ll find today, and the volume of space…we don’t usually build 12-foot ceilings in apartments in new construction.”
Work is expected to begin in the late summer or early fall, and a 10-month buildout will follow. UrbanCore Construction is the project’s general contractor.
Parks is also working on developing more apartments south of the river.
In the spring Parks was part of a group that received city approval to build a five-story, 60-apartment building at 1401-1407 Hull St. in Manchester. Parks said they’re working on finalizing financing for that development and hope to have construction underway by spring 2025.
Parks’ architecture practice, Walter Parks Architects, is one of the busiest local firms in the multifamily sector. It has designed new-construction apartment buildings like Manchester’s South Falls tower and the nearly-complete Parkline townhomes in the Fan. It’s also been the architect of numerous adaptive reuse developments around the city, including the apartment conversions of both the former LaDiff furniture building and the Mutual Building.
Happy to hear this. Best of luck with this project.
This section of Broad Street needs transformative change. Glad to see it’s finally starting.
Yes! Now about the next block…
Patiently awaiting the day when they chop down the trees growing out of the floor and roofs of the buildings located between 1st and 2nd street.
They should consider moving those “building trees” to some of the vacant tree wells. If they can survive growing out of the wall and floors they might be hard enough to do well in the compacted dirt and space of our many empty tree wells.
Seems like a great project. It’s always nice to see another historic preservation undertaking. It would be good if more of the new mixed-use and multifamily were built to the same quality as the older stuff. Fifty years from now, no one will spend a nickel “preserving” most of the apartment buildings going up around town these days.
In the last budget, our City Council put $500k towards the beautification of historic Broad Street. Remember when we had a storefront cleanup effort before the bike race? We keep doing these small measures that don’t build towards anything. As a next step, I would love to see tax abatements for owners to rehab and occupy the properties they’ve been land banking for so long. We have so much potential but when this is what greets you on the street level it unfortunately reinforces some longstanding perceptions of downtown. Very glad to hear of this project and I hope it’s… Read more »
Boz is correct about the need for change on this corridor. The next Mayor should make it a priority to effect a face lift here. It’s the home of our city and state governments and one of the biggest medical centers in the country. The daytime customers are built-in. Let’s make it attractive to night-time customers as well.
Why not the current Mayor?
Nice to see someone preserving nice old buildings instead of building hotel/apartments.
I’m so grateful that these historic buildings are going to be restored Best wishes to you Walter!
It’s a shame they’ve sat vacant for at least two decades (by Walter’s estimation). Glad to see someone breathing life into the Arts District. I’m actually old enough (barely) to remember when the Broad Street retail corridor was a spectacle to behold, especially during the holiday season. Broad – especially from 1st to about 10th streets — used to be absolutely TEEMING with people – and the array of retailers up and down Broad was amazing. When I was a little kid (and I’m turning 62 in less than two months) in the late 1960s, we could literally spend an… Read more »
Absolutely wonderful news! This is such an amazing area with beautiful late 18th and early 19th century buildings. And so much history!
Maybe Grace Street between 5th and 6th will be next. Shame to be so lifeless in that block when the Dominion Energy Center is so busy.
What would really breathe life back into that section of E. Grace would be if something akin to the original development proposed in 2016 — which ironically was called “City Center” — were to be built. The $86 million project called for up to two mixed-use buildings (depending on the final design) — of around 18 or 20 stories tall — and would contain a approximately 28,000 square feet of ground-level retail/commercial space and 372,000 square feet of residential/commercial and/or hotel space as well as 800 parking spaces, of which up to 600 would be made available to the general… Read more »