Features

Sangamon Street is the coming place

[SEPT. 13, 2002]  Sangamon Street was a busy place in the 1850s, bustling with hotels and other businesses to serve the travelers who came in on the train. Almost 150 years later, the historic street is once again bringing folks to downtown Lincoln, not just for an overnight stay but as a place to live.

[Click here for more photos]

Above the businesses on South Sangamon there are now 21 apartments. According to Larry Steffens, who has developed 14 of them, there could be a lot more if everybody who owned property on the street decided to turn the upper stories of their businesses into living units. He estimates there could be 46 housing units on the block between Pulaski and Broadway alone.

[Photos by Jan Younquist]

The newest apartment, already rented, was remodeled by Steve and Susie Fuhrer. It’s located above Health and Fitness Balance, also remodeled by the Fuhrers, which is next door to Susie’s Blue Dog Inn.

The new apartment, like many others on the block, preserves as much historic appeal as possible. Windows the size of the originals were installed in the foot-thick brick wall in front, providing a view of the courthouse dome and the mural across the street. The brick has been cleaned, tuck-pointed and sealed.

It wasn’t possible to save the original wood floor, so the new apartment is carpeted except for tile floors in the kitchen and bath. The apartment is a gracious blend of old and new — the old brick wall and a brand-new all-electric kitchen.

Above her Blue Dog Inn, Susie said, the floors are in good condition, but the Fuhrers have no plans to develop that space right now. Originally the Illinois Hotel, the upper floors are divided into 34 small rooms and a suite. If times get better, the Fuhrers might think about building more apartments.

Dwight Smothers, who owns Flounders, thinks he could fit eight apartments in the space above his nightclub, but he’s not ready to do that right now, either. He did remodel the front of his building about four years ago and put in new floors.

"If things pick up, we might think about making apartments upstairs," he said.

Across Pulaski Street, Dale Bassi and partner Dr. Larry Crisafulli are completing the last of six apartments in the building at 201-205 Sangamon. They have also created new street-level space, which now houses a group of new and old businesses.

Again, the developers have kept many of the historic features, including brick walls and hardwood floors. Two of the front apartments have lofts. All are rented.

"We’ve developed 4,000 square feet up and another 4,000 square feet down," Bassi said. Bassi has no concrete plans to do anything more on Sangamon Street now, but he’s open to ideas for further development there.

In the corner building at street level are Franz Express, with shipping and copying services, Coffee With Einstein, and Lan Café, which offers Internet access and gaming. To bring even more people to Sangamon Street, Coffee with Einstein holds open mic night on Thursdays and has live entertainment most weekends.

The newest business, AMP Studio, is a digital photography studio owned by Adam May, whose motto is "pictures about people."

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The Steffens family owns several businesses on the ground floor below their apartments and rents space to two others, Closet Classics resale shop and A. Lincoln General Store, which sells both new and consignment items.

The family operates Grapes and Grounds, which sells wines and specialty coffees, Capone’s restaurant, and Eckert’s, Inc. decorating studio. Grapes and Grounds has recently been incorporated with Capone’s.

Capone’s is giving folks another reason to visit Sangamon Street, with a full lunch menu Monday through Saturday and a dinner menu for the evening. It also features live jazz or blues Wednesday, Friday and Saturday evenings.

Steffens bought the property on the south half of the block and began developing it five years ago. His 14 apartments include efficiencies, one-bedroom and two-bedroom units; the largest has 1,300 square feet of space.

His own home, a former warehouse above Closet Classics, includes 4,500 square feet of living space on the second floor, a 500-square-foot library on the ground floor and another 4,500 square feet in the basement.

Historic features preserved in the Steffens buildings include the oak woodwork and the pressed tin ceiling in Eckert’s.

The Steffens family also maintains the park between Sangamon Street and the railroad track, and Larry painted the mural on the back of the Neal Tire building. The mural gives tenants and visitors an idea of the bustling place Sangamon Street was in the early history of Lincoln, during the decade when Abe Lincoln himself christened the new town.

Many of the buildings depicted in the mural were hotels — the Spitly Hotel, C & A House, the Illinois Hotel, the Western Hotel and the Monroe House. Other businesses include Dutz Paints, Boots and Shoes, and the Lincoln Volksblatt, an early German-language newspaper.

Bassi says "living above the store" has been a tradition in downtowns since the turn of the last century.

"It is the best use of downtown space in towns like Lincoln. If you bring people downtown, you bring life downtown. There is no replacement for bringing people here."

[Photo provided by Adam May]
[Click to enlarge]

Bassi is a member of the Economic Restructuring Committee of Main Street Lincoln, which has a $20,000 grant from the state to find ways to bring more businesses downtown.

"We still need more shops downtown. We need to point to smaller niche market stores, specialty stores like Merle Norman. We’d like to see a shoe store or a women’s clothing store. We won’t see another J.C. Penney store here.

"We need more stores like Abe’s, Beans and Such, and Prairie Years. We are trying to find other little businesses that can make it downtown."

[Joan Crabb]

[SEPT. 5, 2002]  Johnson Brothers Liquor Company, new wholesale wine and liquor distributor on North Kickapoo, expects to employ 35 or 36 people in Lincoln.

Most are already in place. These include one temporary and three permanent office workers, five drivers and 12 sales representatives. Another driver has been hired but is not yet on the job. General manager Tim Anderson’s administrative staff includes sales manager Bryan Fox, office manager Crystel Huff and warehouse manager Alan Roach. The organizational chart also lists two district managers, a chain manager who will deal with corporate chains, and an assistant warehouse manager.

Anderson said Johnson Brothers employees are what set the company apart from other wine and liquor distributors. "We try to hire the best and keep upgrading them," he explained.

[Photos by Lynn Shearer Spellman]

The Lincoln facility supplies wine and spirits to grocery and convenience stores, package stores, bars, and restaurants in an 80-mile-wide belt across central Illinois. The area ranges from Danville on the east to Quincy on the west and from Peoria on the north to Springfield on the south.

The local facility opened its doors on July 29. At present most of the stock is wine. By Oct. 1 other spirits, including vodka, whiskey and rum, will also be offered.

Headquartered in St. Paul, Minn., Johnson Brothers has 40 distributors across the country who supply to areas ranging from the Dakotas to Florida, from Rhode Island to Las Vegas and on all the islands of Hawaii. The company boasts annual sales of approximately $700 million. Ninety percent of the distributors, including Lincoln, sell primarily Gallo products.

[Logo provided by Johnson Brothers]

Lynn Johnson founded the company in 1953. At first he sold mostly whiskey. After a few years of operation, as Anderson tells the story, Johnson took a trip to California. There he heard commercials for Gallo wine, located the corporate headquarters, described his business and announced, "I want to sell your product." That was the beginning of a long-term relationship between the two companies. "Gallo was what made Johnson Brothers big," Anderson affirmed. "As Gallo grew, Lynn grew." For a time, Lynn Johnson’s brother was a co-owner, and now his sons Michael and Todd have entered the family business.

So far all the stock at the Lincoln facility is made by Gallo, which offers over 40 brands of wines, brandy, vermouth and other alcoholic products. However, most of the labels in the warehouse do not say Gallo. For example, Boone, Peter Vella, and Bartles and Jaymes are among the brand names. The variety is intentional, Anderson explained. Different labels target different market segments.

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Gallo competes in every price range of wine and in several forms, including box wines. Currently, Anderson said, Gallo is first or second in every dollar segment in the United States. In sales it is first in the local distribution area, the country and the world. Nationwide one-quarter of wine products sold are Gallo products.

Anderson worked for Gallo for 15 years. Heading the Lincoln operation is his first assignment for Johnson Brothers. He, his wife, Nancy, and their three children plan to move from Wisconsin to the local area.

He said Johnson Brothers chose Lincoln for the distributorship because of its central location in the region to be served, its easy access to Interstate 55 and the availability of the former PPG plant on North Kickapoo. The company has a three-year lease there on 27,000 square feet of warehouse and garage space as well as several thousand square feet in offices. "It’s a nice building," Anderson affirmed, and it required little renovation. He also praised townspeople with whom he has dealt for being friendly and supportive.

Anderson said Gallo products were formerly supplied by Mueller Distributing Co. of Springfield. When Southern Wine and Spirits recently purchased Mueller, Gallo was without an area home. Then began the search which ended in leasing the Lincoln plant.

Plans are to keep about 15 days’ inventory on hand. The distribution center receives Gallo orders the day after placing them and delivers to customers within one to two days. Although deliveries began Aug. 1, Johnson Brothers is still in the process of making arrangements with customers. Stores have receiving times, Anderson explained, and bigger companies must enter a new supplier into their computer systems. Sales representatives will not contact most bars until September or October, when more types of spirits will be in stock.

When distribution routines are firmly in place, other products besides Gallo will be added. Johnson Brothers itself imports and manufactures, or rectifies, some wine and liquor products. These may eventually be distributed locally.

Anderson’s card lists beers and waters among the Johnson Brothers products, but neither is currently in the product mix. They could be added if there were a business reason to do so, he explained.

Though shipments have begun, many details still need to be ironed out at the Johnson Brothers distribution center on North Kickapoo. For example, except for a small sign in the receiving area, the business is not marked by exterior signs. However, an American flag waves proudly over the entrance. "The first thing we got was the flag," Anderson explained. "Everything else came after that."

[Lynn Shearer Spellman]

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