Fork & Hammer

This 120 year old brick building is scheduled for demolition.

We saw potential in this building.

How do we save this actual landmark?

We're going to move a building.

It sounds a little crazy.

The pushback from the neighborhood was what surprised me the most.

I'm finding myself fighting to save a 1903 landmark.

We have really invested in this project.

It's got to happen.

[sawing and drilling noises] We've never done this before.

What are the biggest risks and biggest worries right now?

You're not going to be able to read.

This is a bad idea.

That's supposed to hold it together?

That's supposed to hold our building together.

It makes you realize why people don't take on projects like this.

Major funding for "Fork and Hammer" is provided by the ETV Endowment of South Carolina, the proud partner of South Carolina ETV and South Carolina Public Radio.

With the generosity of individuals, corporations and foundations, the ETV Endowment of South Carolina is committed to sharing entertaining and uplifting stories and series like "Fork and Hammer."

This series is made possible by Trust20.

Trust20 is a nationally accredited food safety training provider offering online training, certifications and resources for all areas of the food service industry.

Learn more at trust20.co Charlotte, from the refined to the unexpected, Every bite, a memory in the making.

There's much more at charlottesgotalot.com "Fork and Hammer" is brought to you by Biltmore Estate Winery.

soft dramatic music Unknown Speaker> It's moving day.

Unknown Speaker> Neighbors camped out all morning to catch the rare sight.

It is the coolest thing that can happen across the street.

News Reporter> Phil Hanson is going to be walking next to this moving building.

It suddenly looks very big to fit through this little intersection.

This is so cool!

[road traffic sounds] I saw a friend of mine standing outside the Leeper Wyatt building.

He was just looking at it going in and out, and I had to ask him what's going on with this building.

It's so cool.

He was talking about moving it.

Jamie Brown> The lot where he was going to move it had too steep of a grade.

He came to Jeff and said, the only other spot that I think this could go is right next to Leluia Hall in the parking lot.

Jeff Tonidandel> He said, do you want to take this on?

And he handed over all the engineering, all of the work that they have done.

So, we jumped on it.

Jamie Brown> The Leeper Wyatt building, it's a 1903 building.

It served as a former grocery store, and this building was meant to be torn down because there's a high rise coming in.

Jeff Tonidandel> I think the idea of knocking down old buildings is almost a meme for Charlotte.

We have very few old buildings.

For years, Charlotte was a very charming southern town that was growing at a very steady clip.

The banks came and began to create Charlotte as the second banking capital in the United States, right behind New York City.

And so, the city had to embrace growth.

We haven't done the greatest job of protecting some of our historical entities.

We have well over 100 people per day that moved to the area.

Preserving historical aspects of the community wasn't top of mind.

Jeff Tonidandel> With us being in five old buildings right now, saving an old building just becomes part of what we do in our D.N.A.

When they told me they were moving a historic building, I was like, are you kidding me?

I thought that it was ambitious.

I thought it was going to be really cool if we could pull it off.

It's not a light building.

And so you're thinking, okay.

Jamie Brown> This is a gigantic investment for us.

We have no idea how it's going to go.

[road traffic sounds] So this one is all brick.

Jeff Tonidandel> 120 year old brick.

Jamie Brown> Yeah.

So when I think about a brick building moving, I think about all those little pieces of brick and that they could all shatter.

So we are going to take over and put our own foundation under it.

Jeff Tonidandel> In order to move the Leeper Wyatt building, first they're going to cut some holes in the basement so that we can put some steel beams across to take the weight of the building.

Then we're going to put some hydraulic jacks underneath those beams, jack the building up off its foundation, drives some dollies into the basement, put the building back down on these dollies, and then we drive it up the street on the dollies.

Mike Brovont> The move itself probably have the thing set in and placed two hours.

It goes at a very, very slow walk.

We have people that put a glass of water on the table, [laughs] and then they like to see if we spill it at all.

Jeff Tonidandel> Should we do that?

Jamie Brown> We're totally doing that.

<Yeah> Jeff Tonidandel> Everybody is asking us, what are we going to do with the Leeper Wyatt building? We make restaurants.

That's what we do.

So that's what we're going to do.

And this one's really special because we actually live in the neighborhood.

Jamie Brown> The Leeper Wyatt building is right on the edge of historic Dilworth, and Dilworth is actually Charlotte's first suburb.

Dilworth was made possible by Edward Dilworth Latta, teaming up with Thomas Edison to bring the electric streetcars to Charlotte.

And that streetcar connected this neighborhood with Uptown Charlotte.

The Leeper Building is an important artifact for Dilworth.

Originally, it was a grocery store that served the mill community and back at the turn of the century, you know this one, deliveries were made by horse and carriage.

To see someone take such an interest in preserving our history, it really means a lot.

[birds chirping] Jeff Tonidandel> The move of this building, we knew we had to rezone.

We knew there were a million pieces that needed to fall into place very quickly, but we thought it was going to be a slam dunk.

We thought the whole neighborhood would be really, really supportive, but it was a lot more complicated than we thought.

News Reporter> This morning, neighbors and Dilworth are pushing back on a plan to move a historic building to their neighborhood.

News Reporter> Not all neighbors are on board, citing concerns about parking, now that this building will sit atop one of the neighborhood's few lots.

Dante Anderson> Dilworth was built very much as a car less neighborhood.

Many of the historic homes in this neighborhood don't have driveways.

News Reporter> Neighbors pushed back against the plan at a city council meeting last night.

Townhall Speaker #1> We obviously support the idea of preservation, but not at the expense of our own businesses, our quality of lives, the safety of the surrounding neighborhood.

Townhall Speaker #2> Parking is already constrained.

Townhall Speaker #3> What we have to do is consider people over places.

Jeff Tonidandel> Zoning is very complicated process.

The city council needs to vote on it.

It's on TV, and we're speaking out.

Jamie Brown> My husband and I want to work with this community to move this landmark with as little impact on the neighborhood as possible.

We have to get the city on board.

We have to have the neighborhood on board.

We ask for your visionary leadership here to envision a Charlotte that is mindful of sustainability, charm local jobs and history for many decades to come.

It was so difficult.

It makes you realize why people don't take on projects like this.

[birds chirping] Dante Anderson> I heard from the Dilworth Neighborhood Association, their concerns, and so we had to go through some negotiations.

Jeff Tonidandel> We had to alleviate our parking issue.

So we had to lease ten spots from pretty close by.

We were able to do that across the street.

Charlotte City Council just gave the green light to save the city's oldest brick commercial building.

Jamie Brown> Today, we're basically going to be beginning to dig the foundation where we're going to be moving the Leeper Wyatt building.

And that right there is the back corner of the building.

We're working with the city, and it looks like the moving date will be August ninth.

Jeff Tonidandel> That's your birthday.

Jamie Brown> It's my birthday.

Dalton Johnson> My role in the move is overseeing demoing the parking lot, getting it ready to receive the building.

Building a foundation, we're going to dig a big hole, pour a footer, and then we construct a poured formed concrete wall that's got rebar in it.

Once we have the foundation built, the movers will come in and they'll do all of their prep work so that they can actually drive the building into place.

The biggest hurdle for us is going to be time.

We have a very limited window to get this done.

[drilling noise] Jeff Tonidandel> You guys have been working hard this week.

You got the big guys finished up.

Philip Hansen> Main beams, set it, their height.

Right now we got 15 of our crosser beams in the middle off the ends with the small beams.

Jeff Tonidandel> So you're going to lift the building from those main beams and then just kind of breaks, like just kind of lifts the brick wherever it can?

Philip Hansen> Yep.

That brick is soft.

You can just run over it, it become powder.

Jeff Tonidandel> Is that good or bad?

Philip Hansen> Depends.

It's good for us.

Jeff Tonidandel> The brick was kind of dissolving and powdery, and I'm thinking, why are we moving this 120 year old building?

Will it hold up as they drive it down the street?

[road traffic sounds] Okay, the next job is tie wrapping the building up.

Philip Hansen> Four cables, going the whole way around tightened up.

I want to be putting pretty much tension to make sure that when we're moving, the building can't flex.

Jeff Tonidandel> They're very worried about the store front 'cause it's all glass and wood.

All of a sudden, they're telling us we have to build a whole fake storefront to help the structural rigidity of the space.

We apparently need to get on this very soon and quickly.

Jason Loughlin> That's not easy.

They already dug out the sidewalk.

Bryce Plott> We're going to have to pre-build the wall and move it into place.

How are we going to do that and how many people are we going to need?

[drilling noise] Jeff Tonidandel> How many times did we ask, do we need any bracing?

We had that building sitting there for a year and a half and they take, now they take the sidewalk out and they're like, can you build something over the sidewalk?

Is there anything we can do from the inside?

[drilling noise] Jason Loughlin> Not unless you want to break the windows?

Jeff Tonidandel> I'm not really.

[sawing noise] [collapsing sound] [road traffic sounds] Is that good?

[drilling noise] We're tasked to build this thing in just a few days.

Luckily, our wood shop is right next door.

Who's ready?

You guys got the plan?

So, we're going out the door, which it doesn't fit <Right> through the hole in the fence that Bryce has cut, and then on to the scaffolding that you guys made over the weekend?

<Yep> Lovely.

Jason Loughlin> Built two gigantic frames alone.

That's like you measure We carry them over.

We clear the trees.

Keep breathing.

That's for me.

[laughs] Walk slowly.

Only a couple of moments of near death.

Perfect.

Because, you know, there's a hole in front of the place that we had to put it in.

Jeff Tonidandel> This is a bad idea.

It's a quarter inch from the edge.

That's good.

Plenty high.

[drilling noise] Jason Loughlin> But we got it done.

[drilling noise] Why do they need all the stuff just to secure the windows and stuff?

And the building gets the straps put around it.

It's then squeezed really tight.

Let's go look over at the hole here.

This is where the building will back in and be set into it.

Probably 30 some people that are coming together between utilities and contractors and building movers and our team, the city, everybody coming together to get this thing moved.

That's a lot of people.

It is a lot of people for one building.

A lot of people.

[road traffic sounds] [machine noise] Jeff Tonidandel> They're going to tie down the whole building and strap it together.

Jamie Brown> And that's supposed to hold it together.

Jeff Tonidandel> And that is apparently supposed to hold our building together.

[binding sound] Jamie Brown> My vision for the moving day is that the sidewalks are filled with people, and we have donuts there for people to enjoy.

Our team is putting together a couple different ideas of special donuts.

I just wanted to feel like a really fun, celebratory event.

Delays keep happening with the Leeper Wyatt building.

Jeff Tonidandel> Yeah, a lot of delays and a lot of challenges.

Jamie Brown> It was supposed to happen on my birthday, which I was hoping it would.

And now we're seeing it get pushed back, and I understand we're narrowing the gap.

It's getting closer, but I can't help but feel extraordinarily frustrated.

Jeff Tonidandel> The problem with changing the move date is that we have to coordinate with the city, we have to have our permits, everything kind of has to be in place, and every single delay we have for Leeper Wyatt, is a delay for Leluia Hall.

Jamie Brown> It impacts everything.

Bryce Plott> The Leeper Wyatt building was supposed to be moved August 9th, which is Jamie's birthday.

So when that got moved, I was working on the front of the building.

I saw a couple of bricks and I'm like, okay, I've got two bricks and I had some plastic pieces.

Come hell or high water, you're going to have a building moved on your birthday.

[laughs] Jamie Brown> This is where the Leeper Wyatt Building is going to be moved this year.

And this is basically how it's going to look when it's going to make its way up Cleveland Avenue and then find its new home here, right on this spot.

We're really creative with our doughnuts, so over at Reigning Doughnuts, Tim, the manager, creates new seasonal quarterly.

Tim> All right, everybody, we're here for another wonderful doughnut tasting here at Reigning Doughnuts.

Allie Papajohn> We wanted to make sure people at the moving day felt really special, so we decided to create doughnuts for the event.

Tim> We have four different flavors to choose from today.

Thought it would be fun to do a play on construction.

I found some construction sprinkles, strawberry balsamic, confetti cake, and then a champagne icing with some lovely gold dust sprinkle.

These are incredible.

Jeff Tonidandel> I love this!

The triangles and the construction cones are awesome.

We have a new move date, September 12th.

Jamie Brown> It's not my birthday.

But it's next week.

But it's next week.

We're getting ready to hand out all of the invites to all the neighbors.

We are probably gonna hit about 150 houses.

Nobody sees buildings moving down the street on a regular basis.

I just want to invite as many people as we can in the neighborhood to come out and see the spectacle.

Philip Hansen> We're just building up tracking for the dollies to drive on.

The first 20 feet of the foundation we have 35 foot beams with these piles underneath supporting them, and then the rest will be filling the top of those solid with cribbing, and we'll pull right on to those, lift off with hydraulic cylinders, take the wheels up and then set it back down on cribbing.

Jamie Brown> We are down to three days until we are moving this building, and we are running into a number of issues.

One thing that I've got to do right away is overnight this surety bond.

Jeff Tonidandel> When the movers tried to turn in the moving permit, they put the weight that was going to be on each axle, and it is double what the city streets were built for.

Jamie Brown> The weight of this building is not safe to go up Cleveland Avenue.

They're worried about potentially harming water lines or the road itself.

Jeff Tonidandel> The city to protect itself, asked for a $300,000 bond in case anything goes wrong.

Jamie Brown> This is kind of a last minute thing that has popped up, but we have to do it in order to make it happen.

So I'm overnighting this and then I'm off to hang up about 15 more "No Parking" signs.

Jeff Tonidandel> We are responsible for the move route and make sure that the move route is safe.

Got to go up a very large hill and underneath a lot of electrical wires.

We have gotten the utilities to take care of all their lines.

All the trees are clipped.

We've closed the streets.

We've put our "No Parking" signs up.

The one, you know, pieces is no, I don't know if we've, you know, tested every bit of the road.

Jamie Brown> Without the surety bond, then we wouldn't be able to move.

Jeff Tonidandel> I'm worried about our bank account going to zero.

Jamie Brown> Okay, so the "No Parking" signs, we've got all those out.

The utility lines we feel good about.

Jeff Tonidandel> I was on the ground yesterday morning with my laser, and I noticed one neutral that was about two feet too low.

Jamie Brown> Jeff realized that one of the lines was not high enough for us to be able to move the building underneath.

We've got Duke Energy people working with us, see if we can get an even larger pole in place within a day.

[birds chirping] [silence] Jeff Tonidandel> I can't believe the day is finally here.

I can't either.

This is amazing.

They're going to drive that thing down the street today.

Jamie Brown> I'm nervous.

About a week ago, I reached out to one of my friends who's a street artist here.

He designed this up and then put it up last night.

It's so cute and bright and fun.

I just love the idea of making this kind of a fun, celebratory day.

Cleveland Avenue will be closed for today, just long enough for us to get the historical building to its new site.

It's a lot of coordination that goes into this.

We've been working on this for many months.

Woo!

This looks so pretty!

Allie Papajohn> When we showed up, there were already a lot of people here.

Thanks for coming out!

And we did run out of them.

So, that was mission accomplished for us.

Dalton Johnson> I've never been a part of anything like this before.

Pretty wild how many people showed up.

Jamie Brown> We've got neighbors.

The third graders from Dilworth Elementary are out there cheering.

[crowd cheering] Jeff Tonidandel> That's going to be fun.

Here we go.

Jamie Brown> It's looking good so far.

This is awesome.

This is so cool!

Linda Poissant> We have to make sure that all the utilities are out of the way of being impacted.

Duke energy lines for electrical service get moved in advance.

We put up taller poles to relocate them temporarily, but some telecommunication lines, we will actually lower, cover them and once the building is past, we will raise those back up.

They're going to go over the wire?

<Yes> Jeff Tonidandel> The water glass has not spilled a drop.

Jamie Brown> This is its big test right here.

Jeff Tonidandel> All right.

So the next big thing we got to get around here are the trees.

Jamie Brown> Looks like we're going to clear the trees mostly.

As the building was coming up the street, Oh, boy, boy, boy, boy!

We gotta move.

It became very apparent that there were limbs that were blocking the way.

[truck beeping] Jeff Tonidandel> We got like a two, two and a half inch tree branch sticking right in the side of the building where the windows are.

So they're worried it's going to catch every window going down.

We're just going to snip it off real quick.

[sawing noise] News Reporter> We've almost hit the finish line.

This is where the Leeper Wyatt building will end up.

What does it mean to the History and the Commission of Landmarks?

To save this building, which is the last of its kind in this part of the city, is really important.

It adds a lot of character, it helps tell the story of Charlotte.

[sawing noise] Jamie Brown> This is crazy.

I can't believe we've made it to this point.

<laughs> This was just a parking lot and to see now the fruition of this building actually arrived here, it's just it's a little bit astounding.

As the building turned on to the property, it was kind of a moment of, I knew the streets were okay.

Jeff Tonidandel> Yeah, there's no water main break.

Jamie Brown> Going across the foundation, the wood itself makes a little bit of creaking sounds.

[ceaking sounds] Ahh!

Good pour.

Agreed.

It was a super smooth ride.

I believe the water glass made it.

Completely intact.

That was incredible!

Philip Hansen> I'm super happy.

We had to slow down a little bit for some tree trimming, but that was expected.

Dalton Johnson> A lot of meetings to see it all come together is really, really great.

Really.

Just an incredible day.

I love that we had so many people from the neighborhood out here and from offices nearby and schools.

Thank you everyone.

Cheers!

There we have it.

We take a nap now?

We can take a nap.

You can take a nap.

I'm gonna get some tacos first, then take a nap.

All right.

Major funding for "Fork and Hammer" is provided by the ETV Endowment of South Carolina, the proud partner of South Carolina ETV and South Carolina Public Radio.

With the generosity of individuals, corporations, and foundations, the ETV Endowment of South Carolina is committed to sharing entertaining and uplifting stories and series like "Fork and Hammer."

Thank you for watching "Fork and Hammer."

This series was brought to you by Trust20, a nationally accredited food safety training provider offering accessible digital training at any time and on all devices.

Learn more at trust20.co Charlotte, a city shaped by storytellers, dreamers and makers becomes a living canvas.

There's much more at charlottesgotalot.com "Fork and Hammer" is brought to you by Biltmore Estate Winery.