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A $250,000 grant will help breathe new life
into old site
By Jerry Sena
The N.C. Rural Economic Development Center has approved a $250,000
grant to help transform one of Ashe
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Built in 1939 and reduced to duty
as a county storage building in recent years, the old
Ashe Memorial Hospital building will be transformed into
a stylish destination inn and conference center. An artist's
rendering of one of the courtyards is pictured above.
Drawing courtesy of Miller Architecture
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County's oldest surviving public buildings into a state-of-the-art
inn, restaurant and conference center.
Money from the Rural Center's Building Reuse and Restoration Grants
Program will go toward the renovation of the historic Ashe Memorial
Hospital on McConnell Street in Jefferson.
Ashe County officials applied in February for the grant, which
is available only to governmental agencies, and received the go-ahead
from the state on April 30.
Because of the grant application restrictions the county remains
on record as the current owners of the abandoned hospital and
its 2.3-acre grounds. A private investment group led by a Charlotte
non-profit founder, Leigh Derby, have submitted a winning bid
of $120,000, and Derby said they expect to exercise their option
of ownership by year's end. Derby's investment group must match
the grant dollar-for-dollar with funding of its own.
Derby, who is CEO, founded the non-profit then known as St. Mark's
Center in 1973. The organization, which changed its name to LifeSpan
in 2000, provides educational, employment and enrichment services
for disabled children and adults. It currently has 42 locations
in North Carolina.
Derby said he and family members are the main investors in the
project so far, but the grant's approval will likely encourage
lending institutions to extend credit toward its completion.
Melody Adams is the director of the rural Economic Development
Center's Building Reuse and Restoration Grants Program in Raleigh.
She said renovating the building is expected to cost just under
$3.1 million. The completed project, including equipment, furnishings
and staff, is expected to reach about $4.2 million.
The grant is based on the promise that the inn and conference
center will provide 25 new jobs. The program allows up to $10,000
for each net new job resulting from proposed projects.
Net new jobs are defined as jobs that did not previously exist
in the state and excludes transferring employees from other North
Carolina sites already operated by the business owners.
Adams said the grant comes in the form of a deferred forgivable
loan. Such loans must be repaid, she said, if the recipient developer
fails to create the promised number of jobs within two years of
the grant's award date, which in this case is April 30, 2010.
The jobs must be maintained for at least six months.
Ashe County Director of Economic Development Pat Mitchell said
the county received a pre-development grant of $25,000 a year
or two ago to pay for an engineering assessment, a phase-one environmental
study and architectural drawings.
The grant application required a full description of the project,
including business plan, projection of employment, a description
of the types of jobs it was expected to create as well as salaries
and benefits.
Adams said the developers projected a payroll of just under $488,000.
Derby said the idea convert an historic building into a modern
inn and conference facility was spawned during a visit a few years
ago to Portland, Ore. He and his wife were staying at a refurbished
school built near the beginning of the 20th century.
"That's the model for what we're doing," he said.
He contacted a local real estate agent with the notion of locating
a distinctive, historically significant building for their own
project. The old Lansing School had just been sold, but the real
estate agent suggested another possibility - the old hospital.
Mitchell said the process for purchasing county property requires
a bidding process. After about three tries, Derby's group came
up with the top bid.
Derby said he expects to carve 22-23 guest rooms out of the old
building, and several conference rooms for a capacity of about
200 people. None of the rooms will be too large though, with the
largest accommodating no more than 55 at once, he said.
The center, dubbed Stonehaven, will also house a full-service
restaurant, which Derby said will offer a menu similar to those
at the popular Village Tavern restaurants, a chain with locations
in Winston-Salem, Charlotte and Greensboro, as well as other cities
across the country.
The restaurant will offer courtyard dining with an outdoor fireplace
and a a casual, communal atmosphere, he said.
"You'll feel comfortable going in wearing jeans," Derby
said, "or, on a Saturday night, coming and getting something
a little bit fancier."
"We'll also have a bar and we're planning spa services as
well," Derby explained.
Derby is also making plans to further expand the county's growing
access to fine wines.
"The boiler room and coal room, that is now filled with a
huge boiler will be all [demolished]," he said. "Actually,
the walls are concrete brick, same as the later addition to the
hospital - the interior walls are brick - and we're going to turn
that into a wine cellar with wine tastings. So, it's just going
to be a fun place."
Derby is billing Stonehaven as a destination inn and conference
center, but stressed that the corporate clients and long-distance
travelers will be only a portion of the public they hope to serve.
"The main thing we want this place to be, really, is just
a great place for people from the community to come - people from
Ashe County and even surrounding counties - as a great place to
come have parties, special dinners, local businesses will come
and have their meetings there, places for people to have special
birthdays, and so on. But the real life blood of this will be
the local community.
"Our objective is to really have a lot of events going on
at the same time so you create a lot of energy," he said.
"You have people visiting the community, you've got people
having local meetings, you might have a kid's birthday party going
on; later that night there may be a wine tasting - just people
bumping into each other. On cool nights we'll have a wood fire
burning outside. And we'll have things going breakfast, lunch
and dinner, 365 [days].
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