Sep. 30—The city of Beckley is littered with old buildings, some historic, that have fallen into disrepair or disuse.
While some have been given new life and turned into coffee shops or office spaces, others have been torn down due to safety concerns or simply left vacant.
Brian Brown, a local businessman, is hoping to give a street of vacant buildings in Beckley new life by turning them into restaurants, bars, a marketplace, a museum and more.
Located along Central Avenue and bordering the Lewis McManus Honor Trail in what was once called Beckley's warehouse district, Brown is calling his new development "The District."
Over the past year, Brown and his partners have spent their time acquiring abandoned buildings on the block and dreaming about what they would someday become.
Now they are ready to turn those dreams into realities with the goal of opening a café, and bar and restaurant combo by mid-2024.
A master plan for "The District"
To turn those dreams into tangible developments, the first thing they need is a master plan.
Putting this master plan together are architects from Four Square Architects, a boutique architectural and interior design firm out of Winchester, Va., that is owned by Kyle Hopkins.
During a week in August, Hopkins and other employees from his firm traveled to Beckley to begin the design work for The District's master plan.
This started with the tedious work of sketching the layout of the roughly half a dozen abandoned buildings that Brown's team has acquired to hone in on the size and structure of each building.
Hopkins said the floor plans will be used as the basis for the development of the master plan.
When it comes to developing the plans, Hopkins said it's less about creating something entirely new and more about relying on the history and design of the current buildings to inspire and shape the new plans.
"We really try for these old buildings to kind of find and research the history of them," he said. "One of the things I think in a successful finished project is not just the kind of new uses that are in there, but also showing the history throughout the building's life."
Hopkins said this can be done in several ways from exposing doors and windows that were covered up over the years or looking for ways to highlight the building's original use and architecture.
"It's great to have these buildings," he said. "A lot of towns, they just instantly knock them down because they're old and they replace them with some kind of cheap architecture that is really just kind of a sad addition. So just even to be able to have these buildings, I think it's gonna be such a great asset in bringing back some life and vibrancy down here."
As his company is based in the historical district of Winchester, Hopkins said projects like these are well within his wheelhouse.
"We've been doing a bunch of adaptive reuse, which is basically taking a building and changing it into something — a new use," he said. "We've been in Davis, West Virginia; Wardensville — more towards the kind of northern part of West Virginia and Virginia but we're kind of getting in the sweet spot for these old buildings making them kind of relevant again."
Plans for 2024
Brown said the first two buildings they are looking to develop, which he hopes to have open by mid-2024, are the Bosco Inc. building and a smaller brick building at the end of Central Avenue which was once a machine shop.
Brown said he's estimating it will take around $600,000 to bring both buildings online but he's hoping to have them done by next fall.
"It's my goal is to be serving cocktail there by my birthday on Aug. 1," Brown said.
For the Bosco building, which was most recently an office supply warehouse but was originally a Nehi bottling facility, Brown said he's envisioning a coffee shop that would also sell tasty treats like cheesecakes.
During a recent tour of the Bosco building with The Register-Herald, Hopkins pointed out architectural aspects of the Bosco building that have changed over the years which, to a trained eye, tell the story of how the building was used.
One of the first things Hopkins pointed out was the barn-like style doors that went from floor to ceiling on the side of the building that opened toward the Lewis McManus Honor Trail.
Back when the Bosco was a bottling plant and the Lewis McManus Honor Trail was a rail line, Hopkins said the doors would have been used to easily load bottles onto the waiting train.
In thinking up new uses for the space, Hopkins said he would like to keep the door but possibly turn that area into an outdoor patio space.
He also pointed out the stone arches on top of the windows throughout the building, which to him signified that the original windows had been replaced and the opening made smaller.
"When people are having to replace windows because the windows are failing, it's cheaper to make smaller openings," Hopkins said.
He added that replacing an arch window would also be expensive and would need to be custom made, just like everything else in the building when it was initially built.
"When these buildings were actually crafted, there were literally artisans that would do each of these pieces and they took a long time because they're all handcrafted," Hopkins said. "Nowadays, those artisans are just kind of dying off."
The next building Brown plans to develop is a small brick building at the far end of the property just before the tunnel along the Lewis McManus Honor Trail that goes under Robert C. Byrd Drive.
Unlike the Bosco building, several large pieces of equipment, which were used when the building was a machine shop, are still inside the structure.
Along the back wall of the machine shop is a long wooden workbench with shelves on the tops that contain random knickknacks. Underneath the bench are rows of tiny drawers with faded labels that were likely once filled with screws, nails and other small machinery items.
In front of the back wall workbench is another long wooden table. Hopkins said he thinks this area would be the perfect place for a bar setup.
"We really want to maintain what's already here so when people come in, they can see the authenticity of the building," he said. "It's not just this kind of cleaned up version that kind of throws all that stuff away."
Brown said he plans to run the bar they're planning for the small brick building.
"It's always been kind of a goal of mine to have a bar restaurant as well as actually investing. So it's a little bit of a dream come true and a lot of fun for us to undertake," Brown said.
All about the history
For the remaining buildings on the block, Brown said they are hoping to have a restaurant in one building and in the largest building a marketplace, similar to Charleston's Capitol Market.
"It's our goal to put so much activity, not only restaurants, but things to do in that space, that it will keep people constantly coming for a different experience," Brown said. "That's one of the things that we intend to do, is just load the place with tons of activity, always have something new and fresh going on that continues to bring new customers in and inviting to people off the highway and keep everything going."
While the buildings' uses will be new, Brown said he wants to bring back the level of activity this area used to see when it was known as the manufacturing district and had a rail line running through it.
"I was talking with a friend recently and he pointed out that this area is the last vestige left of what grew Beckley because this is where all the manufacturing, all of the supplies and materials came in and this was the staging ground for all of those things to be sent throughout the city," Brown said. "... This was the main thoroughfare that grew the city from a courthouse town into one of the major cities in southern West Virginia."
The rail in this area, which was the basis for Beckley's manufacturing district, was constructed in 1905-06 and ran from Mabscott to Cranberry. It was initially the Piney River and Paint Creek Railroad, which served five coal towns.
Taken over by C&O Railway in 1918, the railroad served the area hauling coal, freight and passengers.
The tracks were removed in 2002, and the City of Beckley developed it into a rail trail named the Lewis McManus Memorial Trail.
To help with the restoration and repurposing of these Central Avenue buildings, Brown said he is asking anyone with knowledge of the history of these buildings to reach out to their architects at kyle@foursquarearchitects.com.
Email: jmoore@register-herald.com
