History of the McLeods' renovation project of 1106 Broad Street

Mack and Natalie McLeod became interested in the renovation of downtown Augusta buildings in the mid-2000's. At that time, Natalie was in the antiques business and her initial interest was in renovating a downtown space for her business. This interest evolved to include interest in downtown renovation in general, and we began to identify properties that we felt could be successfully renovated into commercial space, residential space, or both. We went on the annual Loft Tours for several years, and saw many people our age (or older) who indicated that they would love to live downtown, but couldn't deal with the many steps associated with most of the downtown loft apartments, nor the uncertainty of downtown parking.

We partnered with another investor in the renovation of a different building on Broad Street, but we were essentially "silent partners" in this effort. This whetted our appetite to be more "hands on", and we identified and purchased the 1106 Broad Street building in 2006, and within a year were the sole owners of the building.

Natalie, who is DEFINITELY the driving force behind this project, has spent countless hours meeting with our architect, Alan Venable, poring over plans, having other meetings with our contractor, Mark Capers, and his team, and with many other engineers and subcontractors. This project has been her full-time job for the last three years, and she can cite square footages, apartment sizes, and just about any other statistic regarding this project flawlessly from memory.

Our initial plan was to have either one very large or two smaller commercial spaces downstairs, and ten condominiums upstairs. As we got further along with the project, however, and learned more about Federal and State Historic Tax Credits (HTC's), we discovered that condominium projects are not eligible for either Federal or State HTC's, and we redirected our residential spaces to be apartments. In about the seventh or eighth generation of floor plans, we also changed the number of residential units from ten to nine, allowing the third floor to "belong" to one apartment only, rather than splitting this wonderful space into two smaller units.

We struggled with the very large first floor commercial space which extends all the way from Broad Street to Ellis Street. We were advised by Paul King of Rex Realty, our management agent, that we would probably be more successful renting smaller retail spaces than the very narrow, block-long spaces that we had. So that raised the question of what to do with the rear of the downstairs. As mentioned, one of our concerns was with parking for this project, and in a "Eureka" flash, our team had the idea to convert the rear of the first floor into secured in-building parking, with one parking space available for each apartment. This one decision has probably created the biggest "WOW Factor" of the project. The other major decision that we made to make our building extremely tenant-friendly was to put in, not one, but TWO elevators, one front and one rear, to access all apartments.

Another thing we noticed as we viewed many of the apartments on the Loft Tours was that many of the loft apartments in Augusta are somewhat spartan, without many of the amenities available in most upscale homes. Our intention in designing our apartments was to provide many of these amenities, with the aim of appealing to "empty nesters" and others seeking a more finished residence. Also, Natalie has a great love for architectural details, and we will incorporate at least one "special" architectural feature into each apartment.

We know how appealing a view to the outside, with natural light, is, and we have designed each apartment to have access to an outside view. This has proven to be a challenge, since the sides of the second floor are each on a property line, and window penetrations are not allowed on property lines because of fire safety. With some creativity on our team's part, and after several consultations with the Building Inspector and fire marshal, as well as with the State and Federal Historic Preservation authorities, we have created apartments filled with natural light from a variety of sources. Each apartment has access either to a deck, a patio, or at least one double French door with a view of Augusta. We invite you to view our floor plans and artist's renderings to see how this will work.