Posted 5:52 pm Sunday, February 24, 2008
Businessman Directs Revamp Of Downtown Building
By GREG JUNEK
Business Editor
People who have lived in Tyler for about 20 years might remember it as an antiques mall, and those whose history with the Rose City goes back a bit further might remember it as the Dyer Department Store. And others might remember it briefly carrying the Mayer & Schmidt name.
Business Editor
People who have lived in Tyler for about 20 years might remember it as an antiques mall, and those whose history with the Rose City goes back a bit further might remember it as the Dyer Department Store. And others might remember it briefly carrying the Mayer & Schmidt name.
Future generations might remember the building at 320 S. Broadway Ave. as a professional office complex that received an extensive makeover in 2008.
Neal Vasso, a financial adviser and owner of Ameriprise Financial Inc., purchased the building in August 2007 from longtime owner Calvin Clyde Jr., chairman of the board for T.B. Butler Publishing Co. Inc., publisher of the Tyler Courier-Times-Telegraph.
"We wanted to have a higher scale, modern property," Vasso said. "We think this falls into the Tyler 21 plan, to modernize and upgrade downtown."
Crews started working in earnest on the remodeling job about Dec. 1, 2007. Vasso said he has a goal of May 1 to open the building.
The tentative name is Metro Plaza.
Vasso, who came to Tyler from Dallas and maintains a Dallas office, lives in the Azalea District, and he said he plans on being in Tyler for a long time. Tyler was the city in which he wanted to raise his children.
Vasso, who came to Tyler from Dallas and maintains a Dallas office, lives in the Azalea District, and he said he plans on being in Tyler for a long time. Tyler was the city in which he wanted to raise his children.
"It just made sense for us to build some equity and have a place that we could design to fit our look," he said.
Vasso said he searched for a property close to where he lived for about 2 1/2 to three years.
FORMER LOOK: This photo shows how the building at 320 S. Broadway Ave. looked prior to the start of remodeling. Constructed in 1951, it has housed a Mayer & Schmidt store, a Dyer Department Store and antique malls.
"It's got about 17,000 square feet," Vasso said. "We were looking for something downtown with parking that had potential."
The building has a floor below the parking lot level on the side facing South Broadway; that floor is at street level on the Spring Avenue side. Vasso said he and his wife, Stephanie, saw how buildings in Boston and San Diego had features that allowed entrance into the below-ground level, and that is what they plan to do on the South Broadway side.
"We're digging out the bottom, having a bottom entrance, and we're re-doing the whole front and parking lot," Vasso said. "And we're re-doing the inside."
Much of the building space has already been reserved.
The Hossley & Embry law firm has a space on the north side. Schaumburg & Polk Inc., a civil engineering firm, also has a space reserved. A small design firm will also occupy the building, along with Vasso's firm, Ameriprise Financial Inc.
"We have about 1,800 square feet left out of the 17,000," Vasso said. "The neat thing is that every one of the tenants kind of planned their floor plan, how they wanted it to look."
Stephanie Vasso, an interior architectural designer, is leading the project. She established Vasso Design Associates about 10 years ago.
Clyde, a longtime owner, said Mayer & Schmidt, which had a department store at North College Avenue and West Ferguson Street, completing construction on the building in August 1951. For a short time it served as a second Mayer & Schmidt store.
Then Dr. Howard Bryant purchased the building, but retained it for only a short time.
In about 1960, Clyde and the late B.G. Byars acquired the building. Clyde said they began leasing the building to J.M. Dyer, a Corsicana-based department store owner. Dyer leased the building for about 25 years.
The Dyer store closed soon after 1985, and others began leasing the building for their antique malls. The last antique mall owner in the building was Carolyn Welborn, who had Antiques on Broadway.
