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Downtown's redo goes retro Photo by Jim Craven Evangel Family Bookstores will have about 8,000 square feet of space when it moves into this historic building at Central and Sixth streets in downtown Medford. The building once housed J.C. Penney and Newberry's, and most recently was home to Al's Hobbies. Buildings shed facades for look of early 1900s By DAVID PRESZLER The renovation resurgence continues in Medford's downtown. One by one, buildings are shedding their 1950s, 1960s and 1970s facades for a more historic look. The two latest nods to nostalgia are the Central Plaza building on Central Avenue at Sixth Street and a stretch of Bartlett Street storefronts near the parking garage. Evangel Family Bookstores, a longtime Main Street stalwart, plans to re-create a 1920s and '30s look in the Central Plaza building and move there by November. "We've always had the intention of enlarging our downtown store," says owner Fred Phelps, who brought the building in 1995 with that in mind. Checking with the Southern Oregon Historical Society at its offices across Sixth Street, he found some old photos and inspiration. "We thought, `Wow, if we can bring that architecture back,"' says Phelps. Renovated storefronts await tenants in the Warner-Gore building along Bartlett Street near the parking garage. Work has begun, but the plans Phelps and architect Gene Abell have made call for much more to be done. They plan to reverse many changes made to the building in the late 1940s. "The outside facade has to all come off," says Phelps. "That's where we lost all that great architecture." The second-story windows, mostly plastered over, will be cut back out. The ground-floor windows will set back from the street, as they originally were, and the recently uncovered hardwood floors will likely be saved. "We are taking the building back as far as we can to the original structure," Abell says. The building was constructed about 1910 and originally housed a furniture store. J.C. Penney and J.J. Newberry's moved there in the late 1920s and 1930s. J.C. Penney later moved across the street, into the building that now houses the historical society. In recent years, the Central Plaza building has housed Al's Hobbies and other stores. Al's moved to Main Street in August, and Phelps began the renovation last fall. Abell points out that they won't be doing a full restoration of the building but rather replicating the 1920s to 1940s style. Several more modern improvements will be included _ most dramatically a 22- by 32-foot atrium that will be cut through the second story to a rooftop skylight. "That's going to just explode the inside of the building" with natural light, Abell says. When completed, the refurbished building will give Evangel a much larger space than it's ever had. Where the Main Street store is 3,200 square feet and the Rogue Valley Mall branch just over 3,000, the new store will have about 8,000 square feet of retail space. "In our industry, they are starting to do large stores," Phelps says. He plans more space for customers to sit and browse and is looking into including a coffee shop or soda fountain. One portion of the building's bottom floor will be rented out, as will the second floor. The mezzanine level will be offices for Evangel. While Evangel's renovation goes forward with a store ready to move there, the same can't be said of the nearly-complete historic rehabilitation of the Warner-Gore building along Bartlett Street. George Kramer, who has overseen the renovation, says the exterior work is basically done and the interior work will be complete as tenants are secured. No leases have been signed, but Scott Henselman, the Realtor for the storefronts, says he is close to closing one lease for a retail/service type business and has other possible tenants. The building was constructed in 1916, and Kramer says old photos were used to guide the project. "Basically, what we did was strip off everything that was put on it in the 1960s and re-expose the building," he says. "It was kind of like an archaeological expedition, finding that beautiful building under what was there." Such renovations are helping create the more historic downtown that the Medford Urban Renewal Agency has pushed for. "We know from what other cities have done that that works," says Don Burt, the agency's director. "People are looking for that sense of history." Today's Business Index Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 1999, Medford, Oregon USA