| (Third in a four-part series). You could see your breath inside the six-story building at Ninth and Jefferson on a recent cold afternoon. You could see the future, too. If you used your imagination, that is. During this particular tour of what used to be a Craddock & Terry warehouse, about all I could say was: “Wow, look at the space” and “Wow, it’s really big.” Right now, the building that aspires to become the Riverviews Artspace is just vast and empty and waiting. The shoes are gone, now, but you can almost smell them. Faded lettering on the brick wall closest to Commerce Street announces, with amiable redundancy, “Longwear Shoes Wear Longer.” Maybe the ghost of company founder John W. Craddock stops in from time to time. I think John W. would have liked what his building is becoming, especially since his great-grandson Hal is currently building the first loft. We went to check on its construction during the tour, partly out of curiosity and partly because the guy plastering the walls had a space heater. “I have this kind of shockingly contemporary side of myself that I don’t get to show at home,” the younger Craddock, who lives in Richmond but has an architectural office on Jefferson Street, told city hall reporter Mike Gangloff last week. Maybe that’s what Lynchburg needs to balance out our preoccupation with old brick and old ways. Riverviews won’t be shockingly contemporary on the outside, but it might bring in some shockingly contemporary people. Artist types, maybe even from places like New York and Washington and Los Angeles. The cost of a space in Riverviews works out to $60 or so a square foot. Rent is 58 cents a square foot. Both of these figures are much less than the average big city rent in trendy, artsy areas. Even better, the newcomers to Lynchburg won’t be forcing out low-income families in the name of gentrification — the only Riverviews residents being displaced are mice, birds and the occasional bat. “We found a bat skeleton while we were cleaning the place up,” said Daniel Bowman. “We also found a box of boots that had never been opened, sitting on the very top shelf in the very back.” There were thousands of these shelves, several tons worth. For months, volunteers broke them down and dragged them out to make way for “art spaces” and lofts. It was a bonding experience for the Riverviews board, a chance to sweat together as well as scheme together. The project has also involved artists, college students, Boy Scouts and the Old Dominion Job Corps Center. If this warehouse had ever been completely filled with shoes, it could have shod every man, woman and child from Charlottesville to Danville. Riding in the freight elevator with me were Bowman, Joan MacCallum and Lou Gregory — a triumvirate that epitomized the diversity of the Riverviews “movement.” Bowman, an environmental specialist, is married to Randolph-Macon Woman’s College president Kathleen Bowman. MacCallum is a former Lynchburg City Council member, Gregory a veteran of several local social services agencies. They are realists. Visiting the place on a day when it felt like a six-story beer cooler only emphasized that. “We’ve got to have a heating system put in,” Gregory said, “and we need plumbing.” Even artists, no matter how shockingly contemporary they may be, need plumbing. But despite its hollow state, Riverviews has attracted nine condominium deposits. Gregory, the board chairman, hopes that will be enough to reassure the appropriate loan officers. It was a woman named Ann Hatfield who first proposed the idea of converting one of the vacant riverfront buildings into living and working space for artists. Unfortunately, her dream was attached to the eight-story Lukens Building, which burned down on Christmas Day, 1995. The Craddock-Terry warehouse was Plan B — and now, Gregory said, they hope to have it occupied by the end of June. John W. Craddock would be so proud. ä Laurant is local columnist for The News & Advance. He can be reached via e-mail at todurl@hotmail.com. |