When they pushed open the tiles of the second-floor drop ceiling at the former Welsh Presbyterian Church and peered up at the vaulted ceiling, the top officers of Edwards Cos. could see crumbling pieces of history high above them.
“We said ‘We have to restore this church,’??” said Kim Ulle, president of Eclipse Real Estate, the development arm ofEdwards Cos., the builder of the large and still-growing Neighborhood Launch project.
Skip ahead about two years, and $2.5 million, and the renovation of the historic church, which most recently served as the Faith Mission, is complete. It recently opened as the community center for the 129-unit Normandy apartments next door.
The second-floor offices have been removed, exposing the ornate wooden ceiling above and restoring the church to its original open configuration. The stained-glass windows in the front that were removed decades ago and bricked over have been re-created, adding natural light to the sitting and game areas below. A gym was added in the basem*nt, along with a small theater.
“The goal was to respect the original layout of the church,” said James Rudy of Lupton Rausch Architects and the lead architect for the renovation. Studio 4D of Denver did the interior design.
The Welsh was built in 1887. The church found a new place of worship in 1919, and a string of tenants rented the space over the years. Faith Mission bought the property in 1989 for $150,000.
Faith Mission traded the church at 315 E. Long St. to the Edwards Cos. in 2012 for a warehouse the company owned nearby at 245 N. Grant Ave. The Franklin County auditor valued the 6,800-square-foot church at $467,000 and the 19,120-square-foot warehouse at $800,000 at the time of the swap.
Edwards Cos. was awarded a $346,250 Ohio Historic Preservation Tax Credit to help pay for restoration work.
The Welsh is part of the rapid growth of the Neighborhood Launch project of Edwards Cos. that began at Gay and 4th streets and has extended east and north.
The 74 condominiums along Gay Street have been sold, and the 26 condominiums of Bishop’s Walk II are under construction and expected to be completed in early 2016.
The Normandy’s 129 units were completed a few months ago. Monthly lease rates range from $938 for a studio to $2,800 for a three-bedroom town house.
Construction of a similar apartment building — the Neilston — is scheduled to begin in the first half of 2015 and be completed in about 18 months. It also will have 129 units and 85 parking spaces. The Welsh will also serve as the community center for residents of the Neilston.
“It’s wonderful that they’re taking all these surface parking lots and turning them into a neighborhood,” said Robert Loversidge, an architect with Schooley Caldwell Associates and a member of the city’s Downtown Commission.
“The mix of town houses and rental apartments and the pedestrian scale is great,” he said.
The Welsh is one of the signature architectural pieces of Neighborhood Launch.
One of the major challenges of the renovation project was finding old photos of the church in order to restore it to its original configuration, as required by the Columbus Historical Society and Ohio History Connection. The Welsh was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1980.
“Finally, Sarah Welch in my office found some old black-and-white images of the church,” Rudy said.
Although that helped in re-creating the design of the stained-glass windows, which had a geometric pattern, there was no way to know the colors of the glass.
“We went with pale colors to make it look older,” Ulle said.
The removal of the second-floor offices turned up a surprise: three metal braces that ran the width of the old church and might have been needed to support the old structure.
“We had a structural engineer look at them, and he said, ‘If you don’t need to remove them, don’t ,’??” Rudy said. “There was still a lot of tension on them, so we left them.”
Rudy was able to patch up a large part of the arch that framed the altar and put an artistic addition within it.
Although the church’s original organ was long gone, Rudy was able to use the remains of six old wooden organs.
“We worked with the contractor (Duffy Construction) and laid them all out on the floor and put it together ... it was like putting together a puzzle,” Rudy said of arranging the wooden organ pipes into a large collage that was then attached to the space within the arch.
Rudy has been back to visit the Welsh since it reopened.
“I like the way it turned out,” he said. “I think it harkens back to its origins as a church."
swartenberg@dispatch.com
@stevewartenberg