Investors Ellen and Jim Wiss bought the historic Federal Reserve Bank Building Downtown about a year ago and are gutting the interior.
They’re not sure what they will do with it but suggest apartments, perhaps commercial space, maybe more.
What is for sure is they like Downtown and its historic buildings.
“This isn’t it,” Jim Wiss said Tuesday of the purchase.
“We want more.”
With a track record of historic renovation in Kansas City, Missouri, and in Colorado, the couple moved to Jacksonville a decade ago and last year bought the Federal Reserve Bank Building at 424 N. Hogan St.
It most recently was used as a medical office.
“It was seriously deteriorating so we are cleaning up some of the environmental issues and then we will continue to try and figure out what to do with it,” Wiss said.
The building was developed in 1922. “We are real estate people and do a lot of historical rehabs and it’s a great building. It’s a terrific building and has a lot of interesting history,” Wiss said.
For example, architect Henrietta Dozier designed the building with Atlanta architect A. Ten Eyck Brown, according to the Jacksonville Historical Society.
Dozier earned an advanced degree in architecture from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1899. She was one of three women in a class of 176 students and the only one to graduate.
Born in Fernandina Beach, she grew up in Atlanta where she ran her architecture practice for 13 years before moving it to Jacksonville in 1914, becoming “the City’s first and foremost woman architect.”
Jim Wiss is the president and founder of Homkor Companies and Ellen Wiss is vice president of Homkor Companies and president of Homkor of Florida Inc.
Through TBSOP LLC they paid $714,000 for the building. They bought it from physician Nak Yoon Paek and his wife, Keumsook Paek. The medical practice moved to Myrtle Avenue.
Jim and Ellen Wiss are looking into what it will take to renovate the building at Hogan and Church streets, next to the historic Seminole Building that houses Sweet Pete’s candy store.
Property records show the 18,570-square-foot building comprises three floors while Wiss, a marketing flyer and a building permit say it’s four.
Jim Wiss said they’ve met with Downtown Investment Authority CEO Lori Boyer for a preliminary conversation.
“Jacksonville Branch Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta” is engraved on the front of the building.
The Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta Jacksonville Branch has grown to occupy a much larger and highly secure building at 800 Water St.
It will be their first historical rehab in Jacksonville.
“Ellen and I are both interested in helping the community and we firmly believe strong downtowns make for strong cities,” he said.
“That’s a great building, well worth saving.”
He said the building includes adjacent parking, which is an advantage Downtown.
Realco Recycling Co. Inc. is demolishing the interior, a project that Wiss estimates at two months.
“It’s nothing more than removing the years and years of stuff that’s decayed,” he said.
“It has a fantastic interior,” he said. “The bones are solid.”
Wiss said building’s thick walls mean “nothing is taking that thing away.”
Among its projects, Homkor converted a 10-story historic Kansas City office building into apartments with first-floor retail that Jim Wiss said is 98% leased. A historic shoe factory in Boonville, Missouri, became senior housing.
He said other conversions include hospitals turned into mixed-use.
Once the old Federal Reserve Bank Building is gutted, the couple will focus on a plan layout that includes residential.
“It’s something fun that we’ve done in the past,” said Ellen Wiss, an award-winning Jacksonville philanthropist who co-founded Read USA, a nonprofit that hosts elementary school book fairs in Title 1 schools and gives children free books to share with their families. She serves as its CEO.
Jim Wiss said they continue to look for more Downtown opportunities, both acquisitions or land for new development.
“We are definitely browsing,” he said.
