The new space

There is a brown brick building across the street I can see from my bedroom window. It is on a notoriously drug ridden little street called Winston and for the last few years the wife and I have watched all manner of the saddest of the human condition take place on the steps in front of this building. Prostitution, fights, drug deals and lots of drug use. It's a pretty sad little piece of the city but fascinating to watch, sort of like having a permanent car wreck outside your window. The building itself is, at first glance, pretty nondescript. Three stories, facade covered with graffiti, windows covered by ugly bars, with a party supplier and low end sunglass wholesaler on the first floor, it's sandwiched between an ally way and a small parking lot. The sort of place you pass by without really looking twice, that is if you even looked at it once. But when you do give it a good look it begins to become pretty amazing. It's old, from the late 1800's. The original entrance is located in the ally but no longer in use and is flanked by two large old pillars and there's some interesting architectural molding. The orange first floor street side of the building, that IS in use, is an added on wooden facade that hides god knows what sort of forgotten treasures.
As we watched this building for the last few years we always wondered what it was like inside and what the upper two floors were used for. Then a few weeks ago a "For rent" sign went up and we had to take a look. The available space was on the second floor and in fact was the whole of the second floor. It was 1800 sq ft divided into three rooms, one large and two smaller. For the last few years it had been used as a warehouse for the party supply shop downstairs. Before that it was a Hindu rescue mission. Before that no one seems to know. It was in pretty rough shape and at first we thought "no way can we take this place". Too dark, too much work, weird vibe, etc, so we forgot about it. Then about a week later I began thinking about it again and fantasizing about what could be done with it. After about half an hour of doing this I decided we were going to take it. Jodi was pretty apprehensive about the idea but recognized that I saw something in it and was willing to take a second look.
We went back, looked at it, talked about it, then decided that it could be amazing. The landlord gave it to us for an great price and we signed a long term lease for it last week.

Renovations coming soon....