It’s easy to miss the former Oxford Galleries/Heads Commercial Interior buildings near the corner of Second Avenue North and 24th Street. People driving along the one-way street on their way to work or pleasure in Downtown Birmingham could understandably whiz right past the four vacant buildings and not pay them much attention.

But not Leo Ticheli.

He stopped in one day. Upon entering, he didn’t see a dusty, forgotten office furniture store. He saw high ceilings, hardwood floors, exposed brick walls and, outside, gated parking for people who wanted to live there.

Ticheli, who owns a full-service television production company, saw the potential to realize his dream of living Downtown. He also saw the potential to make money.

Demand for Urban Lifestyle

“I have been wanting to do this for many years, and I have been looking for the right building and the right opportunity,” Ticheli says. “I’d say we did this at the right time because five years ago would have been too early . . . We could have bought these buildings for very little money, but the education of the market wasn’t there.

“But I think we got enough people living down here, that, when their friends came to visit, they said, ‘Wow! You live in this beautiful place, you look out your window and see tall buildings. You’ve got a home in the heart of the City and that’s cool.’ That’s what happened,” he says.

So he talked with his brother Ed, a developer in New York, and other backers to buy the group of one-, two- and three-story buildings for loft conversions. “We felt people would want to live down here. There is risk in any business venture. But there are few units available; we have eight left,” he says of the 32 condominiums in what is now the Gallery Lofts.

Real estate marketers Ingram and Associates list sales prices starting from $174,000 and going up to $336,000. The project’s total cost is about $5.5 million.

While they were shopping for Downtown buildings, the Tichelis also bought another two-story building across the street in the part of Massey’s Corral where Ed will build a loft for himself.

And they acquired the 12-story Stonewall-American Life Insurance building at the corner of 4th Avenue North and 23rd Street, one of Downtown’s largest vacant hulks. Every floor is punctuated with 44 windows, with no dark spaces, “so it’s like a huge light box.”

He says other developers have offered more money to buy the 87,500-square-foot building. “It’s tempting, but I don’t want to,” Ticheli says. “I want to be a part of Birmingham realizing its full potential Downtown.”

Next Page: Supplying the Demand