A Workplace Becomes A Home

DURHAM, NC - Where immigrant laborers once hand-rolled Bull Durham tobacco, urban pioneers can dwell in bright and airy apartments for $2,350 a month. The remaking of Durham's American Tobacco district has entered a whole new dimension. "We're just trying to capture Durham's fair share of people who want to live downtown," said Ken Reiter, senior development director with Struever Bros. Eccles-Rouse, the Baltimore firm redeveloping two American Tobacco buildings, including the 1874 "Old Bull" building into ritzy living quarters.

About half a dozen of the 17 apartments in the Noell Building, near the factory campus's north end, have found renters. A few steps away, the Old Bull Building is less than two months from a similar transformation into ground-floor offices and shops and 57 apartments on the floors above. People moving in all but complete the American Tobacco district's metamorphosis from derelict cigarette factory to Durham's icon of civic pride.

In 1995, the Durham Bulls Athletic Park opened on the abandoned factory's parking lot. In 1998, Capitol Broadcasting opened its Diamond View office building behind right field. In 2004, the first section of a renovated American Tobacco factory brought jobs, food and an artificial river to the block where Durham's tobacco story began. Two more buildings have filled with offices since then.

The residents' arrival, said Alan DeLisle, the city's economic development director, is "critical to our next phase" of inner-city revival. "We need more people living downtown," DeLisle said. "That's going to drive more restaurants, drive more retail. This is the first major installment in a long time."

Some of those restaurants and retailers could be operating in American's old coal shed, in view of some of Noell and Old Bull's windows and decks. The coal shed is slated for renovation later this year, topping off the old factory's renewal, Reiter said. "We're just trying to capture Durham's fair share of people who want to live downtown," Reiter said. "Raleigh has been successful in doing what they can do. I feel that Durham has a little more urban, a little more grit. Not everyone likes it, but if you like it a little more gritty, we think that's a large appeal."