Historic Delphos building to become luxury apartments

Last updated: December 29. 2014 - 6:01PM

By Danae King - [email protected]

 

DELPHOS — A home improvement company is striving to fill a need in Delphos.  Bitters Home Improvement discovered a demand for luxury apartments in the small city when it unveiled six renovated luxury apartments after buying a historic downtown building in 2011.

 

On Monday, the company purchased another historic building, at 151 W. Second St., the former Beckmann’s Furniture location.  The company is beginning to convert it into apartments as well.

 

“The apartments are just really nice, but we didn’t expect quite the demand they generated,” said Dan Hirn, who owns Bitters with Tim Missler and Russ Bitters.  Through the company’s first project, at 154 W. Second St., the owners discovered that the amenities offered in renovated historical buildings — high ceilings, big windows and exposed brick — attract people.

 

MORE: http://www.limaohio.com/news/business-home_top-news/50943692/Historic-Delphos-building-to-become-luxury-apartments

 

Trio to transform historic building into upscale apartments

By Nancy Spencer, The Delphos Herald

Tuesday, December 30, 2014 - 12:00 AM

 

DELPHOS —A historic landmark in Delphos will soon be re-purposed.  The partners of Bitters Home Improvement, LLC announce the purchase of the former Beckmann Furniture Building in Delphos located at 151 W. Second Street.  Built in the 1880s, The Beckmann Furniture Building has been in the same hands since the 1960s.

 

Bitters Home Improvement, LLC was founded in 2010 by Russ Bitters, Dan Hirn and Tim Missler.  “We plan to put in 12 upscale apartments, similar to the ones we put in our building right across the street,” Missler said.  “We combine New York-style lofts with the feel of a small town. Its a combination people really seem to like.”

 

Bitters said the trio looked at the Beckmann building every day when they were renovating the building across the street.  “We joked with each other that if they ever put it up for sale, we would buy it,” Missler said.  “The Pathoffs weren’t having any luck finding a business to go in the building so we approached them with an offer. We hammered out the details and we’re ready to go.”

 

MORE: http://www.delphosherald.com/Content/News/News/Article/Trio-to-transform-historic-building-into-upscale-apartments/191/1183/190136

Great to hear about this kind of stuff in small towns!

If you are familiar with this town, the story is really amazing.  Loft condos in a tiny farming town... and they fill up as soon as they rehab them. There are tons of towns in Ohio with old buildings like this in which the upper floors are used for storage only. 

This news absolutely shocks me.  I grew up in Delphos and never imagined that luxury apartments would be in demand there.  I've always thought that the couple historic blocks of Main Street had a lot of potential for nice apartments but I never really thought it could happen.

 

Could this be the start of a trend in smaller towns?  As Jskinner says there are a lot of unused upper floors in these historic buildings in every small town.

I've never been to Delphos, but one thing Ohio has is a lot of historic building stock in small towns like this. And a lot of times these small towns are more intact than the big cities in the state. This is great news.

 

The desire to live a more pedestrian-friendly life is not limited to the traditionally big city urban crowd. Ohio has a lot of small towns with potential suffering from brain drain, but with the increases in remote work, it's quite possible these places could recover. They're close enough to big cities for when you need big city amenities, but are probably much more affordable (not to say any area of Ohio is expensive). That's something that's nice in Great Lakes states. There are lots of older small towns near the big cities. Everything is closer together than it is out west.