News

New owners plan to develop East Allen property

New owners plan a mixed-use development at 101 East Allen Street.

By Bill Moss, Published: June 9, 2017

The former Henderson County planning office may soon be home to office, retail and residential use, the new owners say.

Allen Street Partners LLC bought the property last week for $1,125,000 from retired attorney Harley Stepp and Leisure Craft owner Dick Herman.
Allen Street Partners is made of local businessman Tom Davis and building contractor Andrew Riddle and brothers Sammy and Scott Riddle, who started a successful logistics company in Greenville, S.C.
“We’re not 100 percent sure” about plans for the building, Andrew Riddle said. “We’re bouncing around a lot of different ideas. We’re just looking at all kinds of different uses.”
East Allen Street building was originally Joines Motor Co.Davis said the partners are talking with engineers and designers and getting a lot of ideas.
“We’re analyzing retail to offices to residential to a combination,” he said. “Right now the No. 1 thing we want to do is take off the old brick veneer, restore it to the original brick and reopen the windows that have been bricked over…. We’re getting a lot of design input.”
Built in 1920 as the Joines Motor Co. Ford dealership, the 24,000-square-foot building is sturdy enough to hold cars, which were displayed on a second-floor showroom. “It’s all concrete and steel,” Davis said.
The two-story 25,000-square-foot building, which comes with 35 parking spaces, is valued on the tax books at $1.37 million. The downtown commercial zoning allows a broad variety of uses, including retail, offices, dining and residential, said Susan Frady, the city Development Assistance director.

The sale was handled by CEO Richard D.Whitney of Whitney Commercial Real Estate Services and Steve Dozier, a commercial real estate broker with Beverly Hanks and the agent for Allen Street Partners.

The building’s many windows were eventually covered up with a late 1960s-era brick and column flair design growing popular at the time. Between the original use and that redesign, the deed history reveals much of the property’s history. After a 1930s foreclosure, it moved from entities W.B. Hodges and the Laborer’s Building and Loan Association to Chipman LaCrosse Hosiery Mill. Eventually, 101 East Allen was home to Robotype typewriter company, and then a change of hands occurred between Jane J. Pardee and Henderson County. The county used it for the Education Department and then for the Land Planning Department before Stepp’s and Herman bought it in 2006.