It is more likely an aid for pilots, but when workers removed the old roof, they thought they found a long-forgotten helipad. Above photo courtesy of Cabins, Cottages & Bungalows. Other photos by Kirk Ross
By Kirk Ross
Staff Writer
HILLSBOROUGH — The façade still stands at the old Southern States building at 137 West Margaret Lane, as does the front door, although the dark red paint job is cracked and there’s a busted out pane or two.
For more than half a century, farmers and gardeners throughout the area crossed that threshold. To do so now would not be advised. The first step, as they say, is a doozy. Except for the graffiti on the walls, a couple of fuse boxes and the remains of a bathroom, not much is left to tell you the building even had a first floor.
Beyond the façade, most of the inside of the building is gone. It’s thoroughly gutted, disassembled pretty much nail by nail as part of an ambitious deconstruction project. The project is one of four major pieces of Hillsborough’s new Gateway Center, which will include a new Weaver Street Market and office building, a 409-space parking deck, a 46,000-square-foot county office building and a 23,000-square-foot library on Margaret Lane.
George Horton, co-owner of Telesis Construction LLC, Gateway’s developer, said the idea was to look at innovative ways to deal with the old Southern States building.
Horton said to save costs and create less waste, the idea of deconstruction seemed like a good route.
“We wanted to figure out the best way to remove the building,†he said. “We wanted to minimize the cost of demolition as well as reduce the landfill impact.â€
He met with Chris Wachholz, who runs the Orange County-based firm Cabins, Cottages & Bungalows along with his brother Steve. The company, which specializes in disassembling and relocating homes, agreed to take the project on.
Chris Wachholz said the project took a little bit longer than he expected, but this week, after five weeks of sawing, prying and lifting, the deconstruction is finished. What remains is mostly the building’s concrete-block outer shell and some of the plumbing.
Matt Todd, from the state’s Recycling Business Assistance Center, and Chris Wachholz look over the deconstruction.
“It took us longer than we thought, but we got a lot more salvage than we thought we would,†he said. “We’re still totaling how many tons we’ve taken out. I’d say we’ve got 60 percent of it — maybe not by weight, but by volume.â€
The list of what came out of the building is impressive. In addition to the dozen or so steel I-beams and girders resting in the parking lot, Wachholz’s crews have salvaged an impressive list, including more than 5,000 feet of tongue-in-groove oak flooring, 391 14-foot oak framing beams, 500 oak rafters, along with plenty of conduit and other metals.
After consulting with others in the business, the company also came up with an innovative way to take down the roof. It was cut and lifted out of place in chunks and then taken apart on the ground, a move Wachholz said proved much safer and more efficient.
The crew also ran into something they didn’t expect when salvaging the rubber off the roof of the building.
After peeling back the roof, they found the word Hillsborough spelled out in six-foot-high letters along with a large circle-and-arrow symbol.
“I thought, ‘Wow, cool; it’s a helipad,’†Wachholz said, although he couldn’t find anyone in town who remembers there being one there. Given the steel I-Beams and support, the roof, he said, could have supported a small copter.
More likely though, the large emergency-yellow letters and symbols were put there to help direct pilots to a nearby airport.
Not much is left beyond the walls of the old Southern States store.
Pilot and Chapel Hill attorney Bob Epting said most likely it’s not a helipad. “You often saw the names of towns painted on water towers and industrial buildings to help pilots. You’d see that on a lot of tobacco warehouses Down East for instance.â€
This week, Wachholz led a tour of the project for representatives of the state’s Recycling Business Assistance Center, a joint project of the North Carolina Department of Commerce and the Department of Environment and Natural Resources.
He’s looking for support for continued work in deconstruction, including a building-supply recycling center he wants to build in Hillsborough.
Since it reduces the energy needed to manufacture and transport new building materials, Wachholz said deconstruction makes even more sense given concerns about global warming and energy use. There are also savings in not having to transport materials to landfills.
“This is a new and important industry. We can make a real contribution to green building.â€
You can view some of Cabins, Cottages & Bungalow’s work at their Web site, www.CabinsCottagesandBungalows.com. You can visit the company’s new virtual recycled building materials store at www.recyclebuildings.com.
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