Builder has high goals for Cloverdale loft project
By Cosby Woodruff
Montgomery Advertiser
Construction continues on the new retail spaces and loft apartments on Cloverdale Road on Thursday. Lofts are available for sale starting at $225,000.
When McAlpine Tankersley Architecture designed the lofts for the old A&P site on Cloverdale Road, the designers knew they were also working on the future home of their business.
The firm is moving to the Cloverdale Road location in a couple of months.
McAlpine Tankersley will be one of the first two commercial clients in the mixed-use development, joining Nancy Paterson's Bistro, which is locating there at the end of this month.
Residents for the upstairs living quarters won't be far behind.
Nancy Paterson's Bistro has built a following at its Zelda Road location, but Paterson saw her clients becoming more concentrated in the Cloverdale area. Now, she is taking her restaurant to them.
City Loft Corp., led by Anna Lowder and Harvi Sahota, developed the lofts where an A&P grocery store was once located. A similar project is in the works for the former Cloverdale Junior High School, with McAlpine Tankersley also doing the architectural work.
Paterson, for one, sees the mixed development as a benefit for everyone.
"It is going to be Montgomery's live-use area," she said. "It is going to be very neat."
City Loft began pre-selling the lofts a few weeks ago and expects them to sell well, Sahota said.
The one-bedroom units have about 1,000 square feet and are selling for $225,000 to $230,000.
Mid-range units with two balconies have 1,800 square feet, and the premium units with 2,400 square feet are priced in the $500,000 range.
A few blocks, and about a year, down the road, the old Cloverdale School will become the site of more lofts.
McAlpine Tankersley principal architect Greg Tankersley said the lofts at both locations were built to blend in rather than stand out.
"We wanted them to look like an architect didn't have anything to do with them," Tankersley said.
The firm will take a slightly different approach when designing the lofts at the old school.
"It will be a little more in keeping with Huntingdon (College)," Tankersley said. "It will have a little more residential feel."
That residential look is one of the things that convinced Paterson to move her eatery. She says when the residential lofts are filled, it will have the atmosphere of a self-contained community.
While space was a consideration in their decisions to move, both Paterson and Tankersley also said the neighborhood played a key role.
Tankersley said his firm started in a small studio near the old A&P building before moving several times, finally ending up on Dexter Street in the heart of downtown Montgomery. When the architectural company went looking for new office space, nothing seemed to fit the bill.
So company officials designed their own space as part of a complex that also included retail and residential space for others.
The lofts, marketed as Atlantic and Pacific Lofts, have the commercial space on the ground floor with residential lofts upstairs.
Tankersley described it as an old-fashioned downtown design.
"It will have a Bohemian nature about it," he said. "We are so excited to be back in that area."
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