By Raegan Hennemann, Senior Correspondent
It took only one week for Jason Buraski to realize the demand for residential property in downtown Springfield.
Earlier this year, Buraski listed his recently renovated two-bedroom, one-bathroom apartment in the 600 block of East Monroe on Craig's List, a classifieds and forums Web site, and had more than half a dozen interested callers in a matter of days.
"I think I definitely have something special. It's something unique. It's a stand-alone building," Buraski said. "I guess I expected to wait a little bit longer, but it is something different than everything else that's offered out there so I didn't expect to be holding on to it for very long."
That was in April, and Buraski, who is a construction manager for Buraski Builders, continues to get calls about the property's rental availability and whether or not he is interested in selling it as a condominium. For right now though, Buraski does not foresee letting go of the property.
"The people that called who were interested (in the apartment) they lived downtown already. They were just looking for something that's a little bit nicer," he said. "A lot of people that live downtown, a kind of common sentiment is you just want to be around the action. It's mostly younger people but there are some older couples or middle-aged couples that live downtown. It's just being around the atmosphere, the energy. It's fun. It's also something different that the rest of the city can't offer."
Buraski bought the building in April 2006 and once renovations were done that fall he filled the first floor with a commercial tenant. Then when the second floor was completed in early 2007 he moved into the apartment for a little more than a year.
"There's three areas around the city that seem to be hot, even when things are down and I recognized that and downtown is definitely one of those and I wanted to be a part of it," he said.
Victoria Clemons knows just what Buraski is talking about. Clemons, who is executive director of Downtown Springfield Inc., estimates there are about 1,200 people living within the boundaries of Ninth Street to Second Street and Madison Street to Cook Street. That number she says is higher than 10-years ago, and even though upper story development has been on the rise during the past four or five years, there is still more potential.
"There are thousands of square feet of upper story development just waiting but there's several property owners that in this economy, although there's TIF (tax increment financing) money available for upper story development, are not wanting to take the risk right now to put in their portion of it and that's completely understandable," she said. "We've approached them, the city's approached them and said, we have until 2016 to maximize this TIF money. I can understand in this economy taking that risk even though you're getting some portion of it from the city, getting an additional loan on perhaps your building. It's tentative in this time I think."
For Mark Polk, owner of two downtown establishments, Floyd's Thirst Parlor and The Original Coney Island, and a resident of downtown for the past seven years, he knows firsthand cost is a factor when it comes to fixing up the downtown.
"I think the thing that's keeping people from moving downtown is that most of the apartments downtown are taken to be honest," he said. "I think the thing that's keeping downtown from taking the next step is the lack of living spaces and I think there's a lack of living spaces because it's expensive to go in and rehab these places. Even with the TIF and all the things that the city offers, it's still very expensive to do it."
Polk said he's never had any problems finding tenants for his units and has never really had to advertise vacancies - people come his way by word of mouth. Right now Polk is rehabbing two apartments in two different buildings and said he is interested in owning more residential property in Springfield's downtown.
"The downtown has certainly had a remarkable transformation in the past 20 years and certainly a dramatic change in the past five," he said. "It's great to be a part of it and I love living downtown, I highly enjoy it. There's no yard to cut, and there's always something to do."
Polk is doing just what Downtown Springfield is focused on: seeing the upper stories of downtown buildings developed for residential purposes.
"While we're recruiting services and additional diversity in the merchant group, we're also promoting upper story development. This year, more than any, we're talking to property owners about their upper story development where I think five years ago they were focusing on redeveloping for office space," Clemons said. "With the economy and the situation with the state of Illinois employees moving outside of Springfield they're really starting to focus on upper story development for residential."
Clemons estimated the downtown area is "missing up to 2,300 state employees in the last five years," and for Judy Cole and Ken Fustin, co-owners of two residential units in the 300 block of East Adams Street, they think that decline of state employment has had an effect on residential real estate in downtown.
The original plan when they bought the building in 2004 was to rehab it and have two rental properties. But after a tenant moved out of one of the two-bedroom, one-and-a-half bath two-story units in November 2007, Cole and Fustin went through the process to make the building a condominium and then listed the vacant unit on the market in April. Cole, who is a Realtor for Re/Max Professionals, said she has had about half a dozen showings, but no sale.
"We've actually kind of been rethinking it," she said. "We wanted to test the market and since this one hasn't sold we think we might just lease it, keep the building intact and hang on to it for a little while longer until the sales market is a little stronger in the downtown area."
A couple of drawbacks of the area expressed by potential buyers was the noise of the nearby railroad tracks, the lack of a grocery store in the immediate area, no weekend hours for many downtown businesses and the perceived shortage of nearby parking.
"The potential tenants/residents down here are waiting for more things to come and the people who are thinking about opening a business down here are waiting for more residents to come," Fustin said.
The desire for a grocer is something Clemons and Downtown Springfield are working actively to solve.
"I think that's an obvious hole in the downtown and our Business Retention and Expansion Council has been working for a year contacting food retailers across the country and even as far as Great Britain to make strides to find someone to fill that location in perhaps the Osco location," she said. "And we've contacted up to four or five local grocery stores as well and family owned. The issue with that, particularly in the Osco space, is most grocery stores, unless you have a very high residence population, they require contiguous parking. And they don't consider the underground contiguous parking. They want the big full lot with all the spaces. So we're still trying to find that niche grocery store that will go 'Yeah, we'll give it a try, we'll have some fresh produce, some fresh meat, we'll have some gourmet things, that kind of thing and then you know your deodorant and all that.' "
But in the meantime Springfield Novelties and Gifts, the Food Mart and Complete Care Pharmacy have really stepped up to the plate and tried to increase their inventory to provide for the residents downtown." Buraski had a different mindset about getting groceries during his time spent living downtown.
"I think (a grocery store) would definitely help downtown but you've got to think about it also. Everybody else in town has to get in their car to go to the grocery store no matter where they live. So downtown is really no different. Most people that live downtown have cars," he said.
When people have cars they need parking spaces, another criticism about downtown Cole and Fustin mentioned, and something Buraski and Clemons also hear on a regular basis.
"You always hear 'Well, parking would be horrible.' But the truth is I parked, I never owned a parking spot, I never parked behind my building except for maybe on the weekends. I always found a spot out in front of my building," Buraski said. He considers it "a major misconception of downtown."
As for Clemons, she stands behind the facts. "The Sangamon County Planning Commission does a parking study every year and it's always interesting to us to see that there is indeed efficient parking but Springfield is still a big town in a rural setting and we have the perception that if you're not right in front of your house or your not right in front of the business you want to go to that you're not close," she said.
"But indeed if you're going anywhere in downtown Springfield you can park within less than 700 feet from where you're going 90 percent of the time and that's a lot different than if you live in an apartment complex and you get there late at night and you find one spot and you walk across and that kind of thing or if you're at the mall and you get a spot way down at the end it's going to be more but you can still see the building. So when we have different one way streets and so forth you kind of get into that 'I'm not
right in front and I've got to park' and that kind of thing. But there's ample parking it's just a matter of perception and eyesight of where you are."
Clemons believes the businesses and individuals who have taken on and completed upper-story development projects in the past few years realized downtown has a lot to offer potential tenants in terms of being a destination and its proximity to many of the city's top employers.
"I think there's always something happening (downtown). It has become the destination for events but we still have a lot of work to do," she said."The events are a great thing for exposure and promoting what we have downtown but I think bringing additional business along with the residents is what's going to make the energy even higher."
As for Buraski, who thinks "the rental market is going to be definitely more of a sure bet than condos," he has interest in doing another renovation project downtown with retail on the ground level and residential on the upper levels.
"I think that downtown is definitely one of those areas that's going to continue to flourish. People want downtown to succeed. It's something that Springfield, my understanding of it, Springfield didn't have five to 10 years ago and it's something I think that residents around here really enjoy," he said. "It's neat to be able to go into almost like, it's not a big city feeling, but it's a city feeling. Our city isn't necessarily rural, but there are a lot of cornfields so it's kind of nice to have that change. I see nothing but the future being positive. I definitely would love to do another project, it's just a matter of time and the right opportunity."
That is the attitude Clemons loves to hear when it comes to the future of downtown housing.
"My hope would be in the next couple of years that we can really encourage upper story development for residential over the entire historic district because there's some really great spaces, beautiful scenery and some wonderful historic buildings that would make excellent residential spots. I'm just hoping that we can encourage some of the property owners to trend that way versus office space or even just keeping that space empty," she said.
Raegan Hennemann is a freelance writer from Springfield.
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