The Sullum's building, a 135 year fixture of downtown, is getting a serious makeover.
The building has already been stripped bare on the inside. The new owners, Stephen Smith and Michael Morris of Smith and Morris Holdings, Inc., have pulled out everything, including about a half ton of old knob and tube wiring, all the building's plumbing, 20,000 pounds of old, moldy clothing, five pickup trucks full of useful clothes donated to area churches, and 90,000 pounds of debris.
The project, which will cost roughly $500,000 before it's finished, brings new meaning to the word renovation, Morris says.
"We're not bringing this building into the twentieth or twenty-first century. We're shooting straight for the twenty-second century." he said as he led an improptu tour through the gutted building.
By the time it's all said and done, Morris says the LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Gold certified building will have three vertical wind turbines on the roof -- the first of their kind in the nation -- that will provide 75 kilowatts of power to the high tech, highly efficient operations inside.
"Right now," Morris explained, "Wayne County is largely blue collar. We want to bring some white collar, high technology jobs into the area, and we want to start training people to do those jobs right here."
To that end, Morris' company plans to offer courses training people for jobs in energy efficiency design technologies, as well as other high-tech arenas. They will also offer space in the 15,000 square foot building to outside companies looking to bring high-tech operations into the area, such as graphic design companies or animation studios, both of which need good technology and well-trained, well paid staff.
"This whole thing started for me," Morris said, "When my step-daughter said to me, 'Why should I go to college? There aren't any jobs here that require a college education.' So, I got to thinking, and realized that we have got to have some technology here. The world is on the cusp of all new technologies coming out. In five to seven years, there is going to be a quantum leap in the way we deal with technology."
By positioning ourselves for that leap now, Morris is convinced that Wayne County can bridge the gap between its agrarian roots and the need to have good paying positions available in the digital age. In the coming years, he says, the good jobs will no longer require people to move to the big cities to get them. With the onset of wireless technology, high-tech, high paying jobs can be done from home, wherever your home may be.
"Technology has reached the point," Morris said, "Where you don't have to move to New York to get a good job. You can be in Wayne County and work in New York at the same time. We just need to get the training in place so people can get those jobs."
The "adaptive reuse" of the Sullum's building, Morris says, will stand as a testament to what can be done to revitalize Honesdale and small towns like it all across the country.
By using as many local suppliers and contractors as possible to do the work and man the offices when they are completed, he says he thinks he'll have a facility up and running by the end of the year that will employ at least 15 to 20 people in what may be the first appearance of the economic driver of the county in the coming generation; all while keeping the historical character of an important local landmark intact.
We were off and running. We ran into structural problems and code issues that delayed our project and forced a redesign of the original plans. But then we ran into that brick wall of "status quo" in rural areas as the "locals" could see changes coming they feared. (This is the subject all by itself in another article) Needless to say this threw the project into massive over budgets and time. (We did push threw and we are now 97% complete)
Once the data center (BC/DR -- Telecom) is complete, we will have a base of operations to communicate and operate eCommerce throughout the county. This would allow for additional "satellite" business's such as Back Office Jobs, manufacturing on demand, and many more.
Our next stage that we had planned (and now under delay) was energy. Looking at the area as a whole and what could be accomplished here from an economic development/jobs/education standpoint, energy was the next logical solution. Being this was an agricultural community, it was decided to use Biodiesel in pure form (95%) to power a 2MW power station (Approximately 2500 homes. 2MW is also the limit for the local tie to the grid). This would allow a steady market for the farmers of the area to grow and sell feed stock to the power plant. The byproducts of this plant would be turned back into fertilizer, ethanol (for E85 Vehicles) and the balance sold for soap. Next on the energy list would be a 2MW solar farm to produce energy for the area, and third would be a 2MW Wind Farm. With 6MW of local power produced we could offset any power load from economic development of additional business/homes in the area on an already strained grid system. But this approach has many more advantages.
By incorporating the energy production with local resources, we will employ hundreds that will grow the feed stock, transport the feed stock and by products and create a education within the schools that cover this process. That education would be from farming the products to machinery repair to chemical engineering and more. The local workforce could be retrained to work within the industry to grow feedstock and process that feedstock into Biodiesel, electrical maintenance of solar and wind farms and the ties to the grid. The plants themselves would be community based and the revenue kept locally to offset the high cost of energy and supplement retired and handicap households. More importantly if would give communities a sense of pride and self reliance to go for higher education, work, raise families and with the additional business's that could be attracted with a combination of low energy costs and tax reductions, create a self sustaining, financially secure community.
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