WINTSTON-SALEM, NC – For GlobeSt.com's 2019 ADAPT awards, we reviewed adaptive reuse projects from all of over the country. We are pleased to announce that the Hotel Indigo – Pepper Building project is the winner for most thoughtful repositioning of abandoned space. We will be honoring the project at our awards ceremony in Baltimore on September 16^th. On a prominent downtown location on the southwest corner of Fourth and Liberty Streets in Winston-Salem, NC, sits the Pepper Building. New York City-based general contractor Walter Kidde and Co. Inc. undertook the Pepper building's construction in 1928 per the plans of Winston-Salem architects Northup and O'Brien. The six-story structure is one of the city's most exceptional Art Deco style buildings. The entrance features a terrazzo floor inset with the letters "S&M" indicating the name of S&M Clothiers, which leased the ground floor from the late 1930s through the 1950s. Most floors originally had open plans to facilitate retail use with Davis-McCollum Department Store as the first and primary tenant until the store closed in 1932. The first floor is mostly one large open room, with the existing original wide stair vestibule. On each of the upper five floors, the west bay is open. The ceilings are 14 feet tall, and the existing maple floors are partially covered by vinyl tile and carpet. Approximately 40% is unusable due to water damage. While many developers were looking at the space for multifamily apartments, GBX Group LLC, which purchased the property in 2016, thought a hotel in this location would be more profitable. Internal demolition work began in early 2017, taking out all the late twentieth century partition walls on the upper five floors. All mechanical pipework, electric cables, and plumbing materials were taken out and the original roof was taken off with a new roof meeting new energy code installed to make the building watertight again.

---

➤➤ Join your colleagues at the GlobeSt.com ADAPT: Opportunity Zones awards September 16th in Baltimore, MD, where we put a spotlight on the achievements of those who have had a hand in locating adaptive reuse solutions across the country. At the same time it is also focusing on Opportunity Zones and the potential they offer - for both adaptive reuse and new construction. Click here to register and view the agenda.

---

Among other things done to the building, the existing storefronts were replaced with aluminum-frame glass doors, and thermal insulated glass display windows and multi-paned transoms configured to emulate those shown in the original building plans and historic photographs. Even original 1028 globe lights were found in the basement, which were repaired and installed as the main feature lighting, in the new wine loft. Among the largest construction cost issues were the elevator shafts, which, after demolition of the existing elevators, found that the shaft opening was not large enough for a code compliant elevator. That, in turn, required new steel from the sub-basement to the sixth floor to carry the new elevators and since the foundations were not sufficient to carry the steel, a special piling rig was brought into the bottom of the elevator shaft to install 43-foot deep piles to support the steel. The elevator work alone added an additional cost of $250,000 and a three-month delay. According to the hotel's management company, Aimbridge Hospitality, this will be one of the quickest ramp ups to stabilization that they have seen. It took 12 months to obtain SHPO and NPS approval to commence full construction in September 2017. Opening of the hotel was April 2019, for a total of 34 months from acquisition to opening.