BUILDING, DESIGN + DEVELOPMENT
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COUPLE EMBRACE THE FINER ASPECTS OF DOWNTOWN LIVING
COLLECTED
LIFE BY HOLLIE DEESE PHOTOGRAPHY BY REEVES SMITH
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hen an architect falls in love with a building — even when it isn’t theirs — they have a tendency to get ideas and make plans. Usually they don’t get an opportunity to make those plans happen. But sometimes they do.
Ron Gobbell had moved in 2002 to The Quarters, downtown condos for which he designed the renovations. He walked by, and dreamed about, his current home every day for four years. Two parts of the 19th-century Church Street property were housing a law firm, and a portion had been empty for nearly 30 years. That abandoned part became available for purchase, and he jumped on it. After discussions with the law firm in 2006, they all agreed that he would develop all three buildings together. “I have a passion for historic style,” Gobbell says. “This building was built in 1852, so the roots were laid eight years before Lincoln was president. It was kind of a spec building, three buildings built together at the same time.” They put seventeen units in the Church Street Lofts, and then Gobbell and his partner, Janet Kurtz, moved into one condo. (Kurtz runs Kurtz Hospitality Marketing, which boasts clients like Black Rabbit, Butchertown Hall and Liberty Common.) Former Regions Bank CEO Jim Schmitz moved into another condo, and a third unit on the corner went to someone else.
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