As director of Winchester’s downtown revitalization program, Winchester First, from 2004-2011, Lara Thornbury had spent a lot of hours encouraging tenants and retailers to locate downtown. But after seven years of working with others on their own downtown projects, Thornbury decided it was time to become more invested in the community she was promoting.
“At the time I was Main Street director, I was going to all these conferences, and they said for downtowns to survive, you need young professionals to live upstairs,” Thornbury said.
At the time, there wasn’t a lot of interest in downtown living, especially in a small town like Winchester, but Thornbury said that, as a Winchester native, she wanted to show she believed in the possibilities for downtown. So when the time came to look for her own permanent residence, rather than buying a house, Thornbury invested in a downtown building and undertook a major renovation project to create a loft apartment.
It wouldn’t be her last.
Even now, after nearly three years away from the job to concentrate on raising her son, Thornbury is still bursting with ideas to revitalize her town. She knows the history of buildings, she knows the tenants, and she knows how to sell life downtown.
After the initial renovation of the properties at 27 and 29 S. Main St., Thornbury and her husband, Chris, decided they wanted a bigger space. This time the couple looked just a few blocks away, settling on 16 and 18 W. Lexington Ave.
While at Winchester First, Thornbury helped launch the annual Beer Cheese Festival, which draws thousands of visitors to downtown every June, as well as the Summer Sip ‘n Stroll and Wine About Winter wine-tasting events. As a downtown resident, Thornbury said she likes to make her home a gathering place for people to enjoy the festivities. Although she no longer acts in an official capacity, she is still devoting energy to downtown by offering space to the Winchester Art Guild for a gallery and gift shop below her loft apartment and trying to make downtown more walkable, whether it be working with the Strodes Creek Conservancy to plant trees along Main Street or helping with a campaign to make drivers more cautious of pedestrians in the downtown area.
“You’ve got a front-room view of everything that goes on,” Thornbury said.
The renovation of the Main Street property, an 8,000-square-foot building, took nearly three years to complete. Chris Thornbury was working for his family’s lumber company in Lexington, Congleton Lumber, and took a leave of absence from his job to oversee the renovation himself, as well as to learn more about the process so he could be involved in other renovation projects to better assist lumber-company customers.
Their project was completed in January 2011.
“It just had great bones. I was drawn to the mouldings and trim and the floorboards. Chris and I were, like, ‘This is it; this is the building we should buy,’” Thornbury said.
The recent addition of the Art Guild as a tenant has brought some new excitement to downtown as well, Thornbury said. The guild rented another space downtown for several years, but financial difficulties resulted in the gallery’s closure.
“We just offered to have them here. We just wanted to have them downtown again,” Thornbury said.
Downtown survival depends on people investing in the real estate, for both retail and residential purposes, Thornbury said. During her years as downtown director, Thornbury found that most commercial property and building owners overlooked the potential for loft apartments. Now, though, she said the focus in Winchester is shifting.
Recently, she and her husband rented their old Main Street apartment to a D.C. transplant who now works at a consulting firm in Lexington. Other downtown residents, like Winchester native Mark Mozingo, live and work downtown. Mozingo has spent the past 13 years in New York as an actor and settled on downtown after moving back home because of the convenience and the urban feel in a small town.
Property owners Kenneth Good and Paul Wood said they are in the process of completely renovating Mozingo’s apartment after renovating the retail space in the building. The Main Street location has served as a martial arts studio and a J.C. Penney store and is now the home of Good and Wood’s antique store, called Bentley and Murray.
“We wanted to get that functioning and having a tenant in it, so that we have more people living downtown,” Wood said.
Renovation is expected to be completed by the end of the month, he said.
“I don’t think people realize how many young people are living downtown,” Thornbury said. “It just gives you a different perspective.”
Although there are no immediate plans for more building renovations, Thornbury said she would never rule anything out. Right now, her main goal is encouraging others to get involved and see the potential in downtown locations.
“I don’t see the empty buildings as a challenge, but more as an opportunity. Every one of these spaces are unique,” she said. “They have unique features.”