Midtown FAUST Company, Rockford

2024 Landmarks Illinois Richard H. Driehaus Foundation Preservation Award for Rehabilitation

Brad and Sue Roos, Midtown District residents since 2008, saw the opportunity to combine their need for a workshop space with their love for the Midtown District by buying and renovating the Midtown FAUST Building. Their goals in restoring the 1920s building were to create a space their neighbors would be proud of and would help spark local economic development in their Rockford neighborhood, which has long experienced disinvestment and low commercial occupancy. The Roos underwent a multi-years-long restoration of the 3,500-square-foot building that originally served as a carriage house for Hotel Faust. meticulously restoring original features like the art glass panels. They hired local talent to help with the preservation project whenever possible and focused on sustainability and quality craftsmanship and materials. Using his experience as a certified electrician, Brad designed the building’s electrical system to have the capacity for future sustainable improvements, including solar panels and heat pumps. The FAUST Building is now home to a pottery studio, office space for a local nonprofit and Roos’ woodshop. Brad and Sue Roos have shown exemplary stewardship in their neighborhood and dedication to historic preservation by transforming a once vacant, underutilized and highly visible commercial space. The project has brought new energy to Rockford’s Midtown District — part of the National Register-listed Seventh Street.

Additional Information

In their restoration of the Midtown FAUST Building, Brad and Sue Roos sought small-scale, local investors to ensure the project would benefit from the project. They also took advantage of the Federal Historic Preservation Tax Incentives program (HTC), which is used more often in larger-scale developments. In doing so, the Roos created a model for small-scale HTC projects that other historic building owners in Midtown can replicate.

Project Principals

• Brad and Sue Roos, Owners, General Contractor
• Aaron Holverson, Studio GWA, Architect
• Gary Anderson, Studio GWA, Founder
• Jen Spencer, Studio GWA, Architect
• Ashley Sarver, Studio GWA, Urban Planner
• Michael Smith, Studio GWA, Urban Planner

LI asks: Why is this place important to you?

Brad and Sue Roos, Owners

“We saw the opportunity to combine our need for woodshop space with our love for the Midtown District by buying and renovating the Midtown FAUST Building, which is only 700 feet from our condo on Seventh Street and also directly across the street from our faith community at Zion Lutheran Church.

The outcomes of the renovation of the Midtown FAUST Building dramatically exceeded our expectations in many ways. For one, it took us six years, four months and 23 days! The extent of structural deterioration was far greater than our initial evaluation. Although the foundation was sound, decades of water seeping and leaking through mortar had rotted off the ends of virtually every floor joist, leaving the entire floor system supported only by the center I-beam and 13 scattered jack posts. Also, the eight concrete-filled, three-inch steel posts were totally rusted through, leaving only the concrete centers supporting the steel beam, which, in turn, supported the whole building façade; the risk of catastrophic failure was very real. So, we rebuilt and extended the tops of the foundation, sistered up the floor joists and replaced every element of the façade below the original 100-foot I-beam. We replaced all the storefront and transom windows, refinished four of the original entry doors, and built three matching replacement entry doors.

The most dramatic exterior improvement was the total rebuilding of the 32-inch tall panels of 4-inch ‘prism glass tiles’ set above the new storefront windows. Sue scrubbed and acid-soaked all 2,400 tiles in our kitchen so they could be remounted and reinstalled.

While the creative and extensive reconstruction of the floor and façade systems was certainly satisfying, we were just as proud to have achieved our ‘process goals.’ Sustainability: we recycled over 20,000 pounds of metal from the building, repurposed over 3,000 board feet of lumber, savaged doors, employed permeable pavers in the streetscape, which, along with three large, attractive in-ground planters help recharge the aquifer, installed bike racks, heavily insulated the building and developed ‘glasscrete’ (93 percent ground, recycled glass, 7 percent Portland cement), a material we will use for the window sills.

We are also very pleased to have involved our neighbors and the neighborhood in all aspects of the renovation. Volunteers logged over 13,000 hours doing all sorts of construction tasks, a neighbor welded bike racks from leftover saw blades, other neighbors recycled 10 tons of metal, provided us free use of a dumpster, loaned us scaffolding, jack posts and support beams and the neighborhood hardware store drove their forklift four blocks to deliver pallets of concrete mix. We were even able to provide a lucrative opportunity to 26 community-minded individuals by finding a way for them to invest in the $254,000 of historic tax credits, which the project generated – a process our attorney and CPA initially believed to be ‘impossible.’”

LI asks: How did this place impact people in your community?

Brad and Sue Roos, Owners

“The renovation of the Midtown FAUST Building has had a significant impact on the neighborhood! Collectively, all of us were able to take what was arguably the ugliest building in the neighborhood – one close to collapse – and restore it to a really beautiful place with one of the prettiest streetscapes in Rockford. During the years-long renovation process, we were encouraged by passersby who’d shout from their cars, “Love what you are doing with the place!”  There are more pedestrians now, it seems, and they often stop in to see what we have done to the place – they are always very impressed with the quality, creativity and beauty of the interior and exterior spaces.

In 1990, Midtown was not very welcoming, but now it is. In the end, we are so pleased that the renovation of the Midtown FAUST Building has done so much to strengthen the sense of community in the Midtown District and beyond!”