Architect sees new role for old buildings
Home businesses being envisioned for 3 Allentown locations
At one time, a narrow building smack dab in the middle of the 1000 block of Allentown’s West Turner street sold milk.
“We had Carl the milkman,” said Diane Nagy, who spent her life in the neighborhood. “Carl would come down the street, and every kid got a little container of chocolate milk every day.”
The Allentown Dairy Co. Inc. was there. Another milk producer less than a half-mile away at 213 N. Jefferson St., S.J. Hoch Dairy, was run by Samuel J. Hoch. He and his wife, Mellasena, lived and operated their business there in the late 19th and early 20th centuries before eventually selling to what became Allentown Dairy, according to The Morning Call archives.
Live-work is a concept that’s been around a while, and it’s one that could perhaps expand on Turner Street as well as other parts of the Lehigh Valley, as the coronavirus pandemic
alters how people work.
What is live-work, in today’s modern world? It can be a space that combines your works area with your living quarters so you essentially work from home but with a dedicated section for your office, according to a recent article. So long as the space meets local and business regulations, it can be an ideal solution for kitchen-table startups, freelancers and others.
Bethlehem architectural firm Artefact Inc., owned by partners Christine Ussler and Lucienne Di Biase Dooley, have presented city officials with plans to convert the old dairy into six live-work units and a small commercial space.
“We found it’s actually something the market is really looking for, because many people are now working from home, and they need the work spaces,” Di Biase Dooley told the city planning commission during its Sept. 8 meeting.
She and Ussler have acquired two other Allentown properties with similar plans — in the 300 block of North Seventh Street and 625 W. Liberty St. — with intentions to incorporate work and living spaces into single units.
“They come to me,” she said with a smile during a brief tour of the Turner Street building, which she estimated will undergo about $750,000 in renovations. “They just come to me. People know what we do and they ask us to save the buildings.”
Saving the structures means building upon a concept that’s been around for at least several decades, and it’s something that has drawn artists to old buildings with previous uses in the Lehigh Valley and beyond.
It’s not unusual. Somebusiness owners such as insurance agents, accountants and lawyers operate out of their homes, but typically out of a room or small extension.
In Artefact’s work, however, the live-work concept can breathe life into old industrial and commercial areas.
“It’s a funky way to live, and there is a fun aspect to that,” Di Biase Dooley said, while walking on molded insulation and climbing a rusted, metal spiral staircase during a brief tour inside 1021 W. Turner St. “And only so many people have that drive. So it’s really a niche market, and it’s fun.”
She estimates that the building, which later housed an automotive parts and distribution business, has been vacant for decades. “Now we hope to give it a new life. And a new center of interest for the neighborhood.”
Christian J. Brown, an Allentown planning commission member and president of the Old Allentown Preservation Association, said the neighborhood has been waiting for years for something like this to come along.
“This is exactly the kind of the thing we typically look for with any adaptive reuse in the historic district, a combination of residential with a commercial space and live-work opportunities,” he said during the commission’s Sept. 8 meeting. “I think it’s the perfect use for this building.”
Nagy said neighbors are concerned because of the lack of parking, but Di Biase Dooley said she has plans to secure additional spaces. That issue will be discussed Oct. 19, when the city Zoning Hearing Board is expected to review the company’s project.
“OK, you go for it,” Nagy said. “I appreciate it that you want to fix this building. Myonly concern is the parking. I know you can’t control it.”
City Center Investment Corp., a major downtown developer, also plans to incorporate five live-work units at a proposed complex next to the Allentown
Transportation Center at Linden and North Seventh streets. Plans call for street-level commercial or retail spaces and apartments above for the merchants to live, according to Zachary Sienicki, a City Center vice president who oversees residential life.
The complex, like the Turner Street project undergoing city review, might cater to someone whois a “sole proprietor” — such as a tax preparer or attorney, he said. “But looking at how work is done today, and the cost today, there might be a barrier to rent a traditional retail space and a space to be close to home,” he explained.
“We’re thinking there might be a demand for this type of thing,” Sienicki added.
The potential growth of livework, especially in the COVID era, remains an uncertainty — at least to some in the real estate field.
“I know it has worked in more metro areas,” Realtor Loren Keim said. “I don’t know if it will work here or not.”
It’s partly virus-related, said Keim, who is also a professor at Lehigh University’s Goodman Center for Real Estate Studies. “They are working from home so they don’t get the next pandemic,” he said. “But the reality is if you bring customers into your home, you might be exposing yourself and family to that risk anyway.”
Mark Smith, broker of Hawthorne Real Estate in Allentown, agreed with Keim, adding another reason.
“You need the amenities to urban living,” said Smith, who grew up in the city. “You want to be able to shop at a local grocery store.
“My hope is that something like this would work,” Smith said. “It’s a greener way of living, less carbon footprint, less gas. Economically, it’s a better way of doing it.”
Becky Bradley, executive director of the Lehigh Valley Planning Commission, believes many professionals who are creating work environments as “touch-down spaces” — working wherever needed to get their jobs done. That could lead to increase live-work arrangements.
“I think people are rethinking their lives and their futures, and what they want work to mean,” Bradley said. “Now it’s not so much a measure of the occupation you have that requires that. In a lot of cases, it’s out of necessity, because of the pandemic. I think some of that is going to stick.”
Keim and Bradley also noted
historical trends in alternatives to traditional work-from-home arrangements — artists’ studios inside their home spaces, for example. And the Valley has seen those spaces sprout over the years.
“I always found it interesting that there wasn’t more live-work here,” artist Gregory Coates said recently as he and his wife, Kiki Nienaber, showed a Morning Call reporter their West Washington Street, Allentown home and studio.
The couple moved from New York’s Chinatown nearly 20 years ago and, after searching several communities, settled on a former car-repair facility not far from North Seventh Street.
Everything in their live-work space is seemingly oversized, from the walls and ceilings to the sliding glass doors. The couple did much of the interior renovations.
“We can’t really afford two kinds of space,” Coates said. “I’ve always lived and worked together. Out of necessity, you live-work.”
In Easton, Frank Finocchio has taught hundreds of people how to make guitars and other
stringed instruments from his home/workshop/studio of more than 20 years tucked in the heart of the city’s downtown — a former carriage house.
“Working from home, it’s great to be on your own and allow yourself to be creative,” Finocchio. “It’s fun and it’s liberating, and occasionally you do well with it.
“I can’t see it any other way. I don’t have to drive and punch in a clock. I use my energy when I want to. My spontaneity, my creativity is very important to me.”
Bradley sees live-work growing in the Valley workforce, particularly as the area adjusts to life post-coronavirus, and businesses that provide necessities such as grocery delivery or internet broadband access continue to meet consumers’ demand.
“And during the pandemic,” she said, “it’s only going to increase.”