The Centralia Commonwealth Development on East Broadway downtown continues with the unveiling of five new upstairs apartments.
An open house of the apartments and a ribbon cutting by the Greater Centralia Chamber of Commerce were held late Thursday afternoon.
Tyler Fleeman, the manager and co-owner with his parents, said major renovation was required as the ceiling had fallen in and a large amount of debris had to be removed.
“They’re really different, which is really nice. Not a single one of them is alike. We have three two-bedroom apartments that are very spacious and modern. We have two single bedrooms that are both premium views from the front of the building out over Carillon Park. With the apartments, we’ve been at it full-time for a year now. Obviously, we were doing demo and stuff for a little while before while we were finishing up the stores, but we finished up the last store, and we were really at this for about a full year.”
Fleeman says only the staircase leading up to the apartments was salvageable. It appeared the upstairs area at one time housed businesses, including a dance studio.
Fleeman is now onto the next stage of the redevelopment, the restaurant and bar that will be in the area of the former Green Grill and Shoppers Weekly newspaper.
“We’re just waiting on the city to finalize a few things, and then we’ll be full time on that within the next couple of months. It’ll probably be another year before that’s going to be done.”
Fleeman says they are reviewing several options for someone to operate the restaurant and bar.
The first phase of the project was to renovate space for four street level businesses which have been opened since last year.
