The tower among us
This post comes to us from business reporter Nate DeGraff, who writes about the former Wachovia tower in today's paper.
On Tuesday, photographer Kim Walker and I had a first-hand look inside the former Wachovia tower on North Elm Street downtown. We toured several of the floors, the underground parking garage and the roof during our 75-minute visit.
Exploring the gutted, 16-story building is a bit of an adventure. There aren't any lights, so our guide, developer Roy Carroll, used a flashlight to lead us down darkened staircases. The elevator we rode in was a little temperamental; sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't.
Many Wachovia customers will remember cashing their paychecks in the old building decades ago. The remnants of the bank are still there: an open vault on the first floor, and a dumb waiter that carried money to an even larger vault two stories up.
On the upper floors, it's easy to see why Carroll thinks people will want to live there. Eight-foot windows shed lots of light on the interior, and the views are better than your average subdivision. Apartments on the northwest corner would overlook the new minor-league baseball stadium, and east-side dwellers could look down on Center City Park.
At the end of our tour, we climbed a fire-escape-style ladder up about 10 feet and found ourselves on the roof. Carroll, who wants to put a garden up there, says he can see all the way to Pilot Mountain on a clear day. We couldn't see the dome on Tuesday, but we still caught glimpses of landmarks around the city.
We climbed down from the roof, braved the rickety elevator, and once again were back on North Elm Street. It was an interesting look into a building that's been called downtown's black eye.
Comments (1)
To report abuse of the comment feature on this site, please use the feedback form at the bottom of any page.
If the developer is going to put apartments in the top floors, he should bring a supermarket to the building. Downtown is close to needing one, I think.
Posted on February 16, 2005 9:57 AM