WACO, TX — One of the last vacant buildings along downtown Waco's historic Austin Avenue has put up the for-sale sign.
The Clemons building at Austin Avenue and North 7th Street will likely fetch a handsome price, too. Why? because downtown real estate remains hot, hot, hot.
Jonas Theill has kept some of Waco's best-dressed men in fancy clothes for more then a decade at his store, Suit City. However he said there's nothing fancy about what's going on, or not going on, next door.
"The building next door has stayed vacant for many, many years, since I moved here ten years ago. So there has not been anything going on next door," he said.
But that recently changed. Owners of the Clemons building, which was built in 1929, recently put up the for-sale sign.
Almost immediately, Greg Glime's phone began to ring. He said it's hardly stopped since with development proposals.
"I have had restaurants and grocery stores that have toured that have started working on it right now, could it be lofts upstairs? The possibilities are endless. There's a lot of cool aspects to the building," he explained.
Glime says his toughest job is getting potential buyers in the building and trying to determine if they have the right vision to transform it. These Aspects could cause a bidding war, driving up prices even further than the $1.75 million asking price.
Glime doesn't see interest in downtown slowing down in, say, the next ten years. As developers buy up existing buildings, they might next set their sights on parking lots.
He said with each sale, the competition for real estate in downtown Waco gets more intense.
”It's hard to buy property downtown right now. You know, you've got the Magnolia effect, what Chip and Joanna are doing, the river, all the events that are coming. It's really put Waco in the spotlight," he said.
Glime said it should keep it there.
Jonas has high hopes for that, and for the new neighbors the building next door might bring his way.
"What would I like to see next door? Anything other than an empty building," said the business owner.
Empty buildings, he said, don't bring in business.
