Fall 2010 UPDATE: MACROSTIE HISTORIC ADVISORS

MacRostie Toasts Historic Brewery Conversions

MacRostie Historic Advisors celebrates Oktoberfest with a roundup of recent projects involving the adaptive reuse of historic brewery buildings utilizing federal historic rehabilitation tax credits. In Milwaukee, MHA is assisting Gorman and Company with conversion of the former brew house and engine room of the Pabst Brewing Company as the "Brew House," a new restaurant, retail, and hotel development. The former brewing floor, a dramatic four-story space lit by a skylight and dominated by six huge copper brewing kettles, will be preserved and incorporated into the new hospitality use. The site of a brewery since 1844, the Pabst Brewing Company Complex is listed in the National Register of Historic Places and is also a City of Milwaukee landmark historic district.

MHA has worked with Dominium Development & Acquisition to determine the initial feasibility of converting the Bottling Plant in the former Jacob Schmidt Brewing Company complex in St. Paul to multi-family residential use. Dominium hopes to begin working soon on conversion of the Brew House and Bottling Plant to residential and artist live-work use. MHA would assist with historic tax credit certification and nominate the complex to the National Register of Historic Places.

Historic brewery buildings can be excellent candidates for conversion to new residential and mixed use because of their generous square-footage and open loft plan, their solid masonry construction, their distinctive and eclectic architecture, and their location close to city centers.

MHA previously provided consulting services for similar tax-advantaged rehabilitation projects at the Anheuser-Busch brewery complex in St. Louis, the JAX Brewery in New Orleans, the J. F. Weissner Brewing Company in Baltimore for Struever Bros., Eccles & Rouse, the Stroh Brewery Company in Detroit, and the Pearl Brewery complex in San Antonio, Texas for Silver Ventures. 

Prost!

Bourne Mill Project Wins Timmy Award!

Congratulations to EA Fish Development for being awarded the 2010 J. Timothy Anderson "Timmy" Award for Best Rehabilitation Utilizing Low-Income Tax Credits by the National Housing & Rehabilitation Association (NH & RA) for the Bourne Mill in Tiverton, Rhode Island. The $44 million restoration used a complex combination of funding sources including state and federal rehabilitation tax credits. MacRostie Historic Advisors served as the historic preservation consultant on the multi-building project. Other team members included architects The Architectural Team and contractors Dellbrook Construction. The mixed income project is  being managed by Peabody Properties. 

The Bourne Mill, a historic steam-powered textile mill complex, began operations in 1883 and by the end of the 19th century was producing 17 million yards of cloth each year. Berkshire Hathaway acquired the complex in 1953 and sold it in 1961.

After sitting vacant for almost 40 years, the property was purchased by E. A. Fish Development for conversion to new use as 165 rental townhouses and flats. The project involved the demolition and renovation of some of the original surviving mill buildings, which were constructed between the late 1800 and early 1900s. The new Bourne Mill Apartments, which includes 67 affordable units and has been granted LEED-Silver certification, opened in November of 2009.

MacRostie Historic Advisors worked with the project team to ensure that the proposed scope of work met with the Secretary of the Interior's Standards for Rehabilitation and succcessfully guided the project through the state and federal historic rehabilitation tax credit certification procress.

What We're Working On

From our Washington, DC office, we are servicing:

• The rehabilitation of the Buzza Company Building in Minneapolis, Minnesota.  This historic building in the Uptown neighborhood served as the greeting card manufacturing headquarters of the Buzza Company. Also referred to as "Craftacres" during the 1920s until the company folded in the early 1940s, the building was subsequently converted to a war-time production facility for military instruments by Minneapolis-Honeywell Regulator Company.  The client, Dominium Development & Acquisition plans to utilize both state and federal historic tax credits;

• Adaptive re-use of the Lorton Workhouse & Reformatory in Lorton, Virginia, now the Lorton Arts Foundation's, "Workhouse Art Center."  Phase II of the project focuses on the rehabilitation of the remaining buildings in the former prison complex as community gathering spaces, including the former auditorium for use as a performing arts theatre and rehabilitation of the former dining hall for use as an events center.  Lorton Arts Foundation is utilizing Virginia state historic tax credits ; and

• Rehabilitation of the commercial building at 406 7^th Street, NW in Washington, D.C. for continued commercial use. The building will house a restaurant on the first floor with office space on the upper floors. The building dates to 1925 and is located in the Downtown Historic District. MHA is working with Marx Realty to guide the 4.2 million dollar project through the federal historic tax credit process . 

Our Boston office is providing historic consulting services for:

Adaptive reuse of the former Standard-Times Newspaper Building in New Bedford, Massachusetts for use as an educational facility. The building was designed by Peabody and Stearns in 1894 with a 1912 addition and is located in the Central New Bedford Historic District. The $6,040,404 project is utilizing the EB-5 program for financing and will revitalize this significant building in New Bedford's city center. MHA is working with Columbus Capital Advisors to secure state and federal historic tax credits on the project;

Rehabilitation of the Presentation School in Brighton, Massachusetts for use as a community center. The school, which had served as a community anchor and education institution for more than eighty years, was closed by the Archdiocese of Boston in 2005. At the end of 2007, Presentation School Foundation (PSF) purchased the former Our Lady of the Presentation school building from the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston. PSF plans to convert the school building into a multi-tenant community center that will provide year-round, full-day programs for children, families, and recent immigrants. MHA is working with the PSF to guide the $6,763,692 project through the state historic tax credit process; and

Rehabilitation of the former New England Telephone Building in Lawrence, Massachusetts, by Peabody Properties for rental apartments and commercial/retail space. The project is estimated to cost $7,000,000.  The first floor of the building will be designated as commercial/retail space, providing a viable commercial use at this downtown Lawrence location for the first time in over twenty years. The scope calls for fifty units of affordable housing, twenty-eight units of permanent, supportive housing for youth aging out of foster care and families. The building was constructed in 1924 and is located in the Downtown Lawrence Historic District and seeking both federal and state historic tax credits.

In Chicago we are consulting on:

• Landmark designation and rehabilitation of Chicago's Old Republic Building for continued office and retail use.  Constructed in 1924, the 23-story terra cotta-clad structure was one of the first tall buildings erected south of the Chicago River on North Michigan Avenue after its widening in the early 1920s.  MHA completed the City of Chicago's landmark designation report and the Class "L" documentation for the building;

• Adaptive reuse of the Sutherland Hotel in Chicago, Illinois' Hyde-Park/Kenwood community by Antheus Capital for 150 units of rental housing with ground-floor retail.  Initially developed by builder Sherman T. Cooper as the Cooper-Monatah Hotel and completed in 1919, the hotel became a social center for Chicago's black community in the post-World War II period and was a famed mecca for modern jazz during the 1950s and 1960s, hosting jazz greats Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Thelonios Monk, Dizzy Gillespie, and Billie Holiday, among others; and 

• Rehabilitation of the Hamilton Hotel in St. Louis, Missouri by Evergreen Partners Housing for continued use as affordable housing. MHA will also prepare a National Register nomination for the Hamilton Hotel, a Beaux Arts style building constructed in 1903 to house attendees at the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair.

Upcoming Speaking Engagements

• Allen Johnson and Albert Rex will be participating in the Traditional Building Exhibition and Conference, October 20-23, 2010 in Chicago. Their session "Thinking Like A Developer: A Crash Course for Preservationists" is on Friday, October 22, and will provide an overview and understanding of how developers assess a project's potential, develop a pro forma, and undertake a historic rehabilitation tax credit deal.

• Bill MacRostie spoke in early October at the IPED/Nixon Peabody/Reznick Group Historic Tax Credit conference in Philadelphia on the subject of new opportunities for using historic tax credits.  His remarks highlighted 1950s garden apartment complexes as good candidates not frequently considered for historic credits .

MacRostie Historic Advisors LLC, 1400 16th Street, NW, Suite 420,
Washington, DC 20036, (202) 483-2020 tel / (202) 483-2080 fax
Historic Tax Credit Consultants