“If only I had some extra money, I’d buy that building and turn it into a dance studio.”
You see it all the time: An abandoned commercial property that immediately, you envision can be transformed into a successful business venture.
At 212 Tompkins Avenue at the corner of Kosciuszko Street, next to Mt. Pisgah Baptist Church, there is an old empty building originally constructed to serve as a rectory for priests.
The building is a beautiful, four-story red brick structure. The windows on the second floor are broken out and partially boarded up, while the third- and fourth-floor windows are all in tact. If you peer inside of the third floor, you can make out rows of bookshelves filled with old, dried and decaying books.
It turns out that the building is not abandoned. Someone who identified himself as the owner leaned out of the second floor window and said he was painting. But he would not reveal what his plans were for the building, offering instead that it was "a mystery."
How would you re-imagine this beautiful Turn-of-the-Century structure on Tompkins Ave?
