Creekview Flats remodel

Just after moving to quaint Siloam Springs I took notice of a brick building downtown. The five-unit structure bore some wonderful exterior decoration. The rest of the building, however, needed an extraordinary amount of work. It was not habitable. An air conditioning/heating company rented one unit for storage; and the owner of the building used some of the dilapidated structure for storage.

When my family visited here in Arkansas they also noticed the buildings with their pastel steel pillars. Other business owners in downtown Siloam longed for the restoration of these buildings. After the buildings came on to the market, a remodel company I subcontracted for, DRC Investment Group, attempted to purchase the buildings. Financing the remodel delayed the project for quite some time. In the end, DRC partnered with the owner of CB Faucette realty.

While working with DRC I photographed this building before demolition. Most of the structure was empty and bare, but not all of it. Two upstairs units previously functioned as apartments, and there were some good “finds” throughout:

• A full box of green glass bottles, all empty, labeled for a Portugal port wine. I gave these to a friend who home brews.

• A small cupboard full of electric and gas bill receipts, from the 1940s as I recall.

• An old Vocalion pump organ (upper left) someone seeming tried to restore (I salvaged some molding from this and used it on a small secretary for my parents.).

• An enormous “shoe lathe” and a box — labeled “gas masks” — full of cobbling tools. I was hoping this would be donated to the local museum, but I’m not certain where it ended up.

• Significant examples of very antique wallpaper.

• And and a lot of fleas among other goodies.

I also salvaged some pine boards, old doors, a simple handmade desk — which I’m using as a dresser — and an old metal shoe sign. Main Street Studios also took some very large doors which they use as a backdrop.

Before finishing up my subcontracting work with DRC, I helped do some demolition in the building. The whole project took more than a year to complete, and today I was privileged to attend an open house at the Flats:

DRC owner Ron Drake, on the right, talking with a guest.

A critique of Creekview Flats
Remodels such as this, even when entirely gutting a building, are always full of surprises. DRC ended up replacing a lot of the floor joists as well as removing — entirely — the brick wall in the back of the building. Both of these, if I recall correctly, were not in the original budget. All this to say the project was quite ambitious, especially for Siloam Springs.

Siloam is not some burgeoning urban area where warehouses are remodeled and sold for millions. However, the community is growing — and quickly; just not on the same scale as, say, the urban revitalization taking place in cities such as Denver or St. Louis’ Lafayette Square. Thus, the market for a remodel like the Flats is untested.

Each of the five units, identical in floor plan, boasts 2,400 square feet. Colors, trim and cabinetry vary from unit to unit. The two ends incorporate original brick walls where possible, and the northern-most flat contains an original skylight over the bar.

I walked through the building at various stages of the remodel. From the outset I was leery of the floor plan. The impressive front doors open into a space designated to function as the kitchen, dining room and living room. This kind of open, multi-purpose space is common in modern design — particularly among lofts, spaces such as the Flats. My concern remains, however, that this space is too small to function well as all three of these spaces. There is ample space for a large dining room table in front of the kitchen. However, the remaining third of the room, the “living” area, presents a significant design problem as it must also function as a walkway to the hall behind the kitchen.

After milling around in the space yesterday some of this concern left me — some — thanks to the very large family room. One enters this room upon ascending to the second floor. The railing gracing the stairway is acceptable, although it lacks some of the elegance of the crown and wainscoting throughout the rest of each flat. A large built-in bar resides in each family room (this is somewhat ironic in a “dry” county). Access to the second story veranda is opposite the bar.

It occurred to me that most entertaining would happen upstairs in this space, not in the more formal living room. This may not be how I personally would design, but it is not a completely awful idea. Further, the floor plan was, in part, dictated by egress ordinances for the bedrooms.

The bedrooms and bathrooms are, well, bedrooms and bathrooms. There are a few nice details in these spaces, such as more crown molding and exposed brick where possible. I would rather the granite from the kitchen be carried through the rest of the house; the tiled countertops in the bathrooms feel cheap in comparison to the rest of the flat.

The facade is wonderful, although I’m not too fond of the blue stucco with the aged brick. The blue is wonderful with the black pillars and stained doors. And I’m usually excited to see some contrast, but when you back away and take in the entire building the color seems a little off. If the blue were carried along the southern side of the building, where concrete has been spread over the bottom three feet of the original brick wall for structural purposes, it might help “fix” this disconnect.

All in all, I would love to live in a place like this. The renovation of this building is a very significant step in the revitalization of downtown Siloam Springs, which continues to be renovated bit by bit. More and more it’s becoming a viable and visually pleasing place to be. This will be even more true when the city remembers its plans to renovate the wonderful parks, with Sager Creek running through them, parralleling the area.

Each flat is listed at $247,000. Our friend Christina Drake is the listing agent.

See more photos on the DRC website and in my Flickr Photostream. A pre-demo photograph of the building rear is on this Flickr Photostream.

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