Activating space: A Q&A with Jacob Titus
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Jacob Titus makes no secret that the 70,000-square-foot collection of buildings he purchased this summer with Madison Oyster Bar owner Dominick Simeri is a work in progress. Some vacant corridors of the building still house old dry cleaning components and Lime electric bicycles left behind by past tenants.
But, when the Ziker family of the local Ziker Cleaners company decided to sell the building, known now as Vested Interest, Titus saw an opportunity to step in and save a nearly 140-year-old structure from following the path of so many other aged-out factory buildings across the city.
After clearing out items left behind, Titus is now courting tenants to join him in his vision of a mixed-use, artist-friendly collection of buildings that promote community and character within South Bend. Titus sat down with Inside INdiana Business to talk about his plans ahead of an “Open Building” party on Thursday, which will offer tours of the Vested Interest space just off of Sample Street.
Tell me about your history with Vested Interest.
Vested Interest is a 70,000-square-foot building that’s actually like a conglomerate of 17 buildings built over time, the oldest being 139 years old.
This is best known locally as the old Ziker dry cleaning plant. This side that we’re sitting on along Tutt Street was built by the Stephenson family. People will know Stephenson Mills downtown so the same family, they built this side as a pump manufacturing factory. For the early 1900s, they were here on this side, and then Joe Ziker started his tailoring and pressing shop on Sample Street on the other side, and slowly over time, just built more buildings as they grew and expanded. In the 50s, the Zikers bought this Tutt Street side and eventually just connected it all. This whole property was the cleaners then for probably about 50 years.
It was unified as the Ziker Cleaners and they moved out, then, in 2017. So, this building is 70,000 square feet. They moved to a 10,000-square-foot building. They didn’t need all the space, and for a dry cleaner that these days needs to operate pretty efficiently, the overhead of running and of operating out of a very old building was hard for the business. So, they moved out, but the Zikers felt pretty strongly that it shouldn’t just be left empty. Even next door is the old Sibley plant that’s like one of the bigger industrial ruins in town and I think a pretty clear reminder to the Zikers of what happens if you just leave the building to sit and nobody shows up to it and takes care of it.
Around that time, David Ziker had met a guy named Rami who is one of the co-founders at Lang Lab, not too far from here. David asked Rami if he would help him think of a vision for the building. He had tried to sell the building and hadn’t got any interest. Being 17 buildings built over time and then all connected, it’s really strange. It’s hard to think of how you would use it other than for many different uses. And so that was what David and Rami started, was could we reimagine the building as a home for many different people doing many different things. And, that’s when I moved in.
Rami asked me if I would move in. I was currently starting my photography and design business and doing it out of my house, so I moved into a little office on the other side of the building. Then, for the next six years, I was a tenant here and moved around to some different parts of the building, and renovated a few parts. We renovated the offices next door that are The LGBTQ Center now, and then renovated our office space here and just over time really fell in love with the building and loved working on it and loved the vision of reclaiming old space that just feels really good and feels connected to the history of the city in a way that we can carry forward into whatever work we’re doing today.
That was really attractive to me and many of us who work here.
Tell me more about the transition from being a tenant in the building to owning it.
I realized that whatever form my studio would take as photography and design and video production that I would need a space for probably the rest of my life and that it would probably be prudent for me to think about owning a space instead of renting a space.
It wasn’t obvious to me that it would be this building, because it’s so large and I, frankly, don’t need this much space for myself. So, I started to look at smaller buildings that would sort of be a natural home for me and for maybe a few other collaborators, some of the people who are in this specific office space. But, nothing quite right turned up and during that search David Ziker asked if I would consider buying this building.
Around the same time, I had gotten to know Dominick Simeri who owns the oyster bar downtown and he was looking to get involved in a creative business project outside of operating the bar. So, buying the building then became our project.
For me, it was just a slight shift from all of my time being spent running my studio to part of my time being a landlord. It was in part buying the buildings because I want to have studio space for myself and in part that I really believe in the vision and love the building and it was not clear who would carry that forward.
Who are some of your current tenants?
We have about 20 tenants right now. The (LGBTQ) Center’s one. Revenant coffee roasters, they’re another. A group called Stronghold Gym, their personal training gym is right next to the coffee roaster. There’s a couple of sewing businesses. One is called The Lyte Couture and then one is called Sew Loved. They do sewing training for women. The furniture company Liberty & 33rd has some storage here.
A lot of the tenants are some version of an artist or a creative business. They range from some painters all the way to, next door to us is Ryan Blaske, who’s a local filmmaker. Chuck Fry is another local filmmaker that’s here. A woman named Sarah Bloom who does letterpress, like traditional letterpress printing.
Who would you like to see move in?
We closed on the purchase in April, and a big task since then has been just clearing out space, just getting it empty so people could come and get a vision for what they might do with it, and sectioning it off some. The Zikers had unified all 70,000 square feet, and so a big task in making the building work is how do you section it off so that people can rent a bite-sized chunk for their project and it’s not a hallway that people can just walk through.
Right now we have, I would say, three different kinds of spaces available. One would be large, light industrial space. That’s up on the front, along Sample Street. There’s a big, large warehouse that was built for their commercial uniform business. That’s just big, empty space. For many years Crossroads Solar was located up there until just recently. So, there’s space like that.
Another kind of space would be, you might think of it as a makers’ space. It’s not quite industrial, but not like an artist’s studio. It’s somewhere in between, which is like 1,000 to 2,000 square feet and concrete floor, just simple, straightforward space that we imagined could be something like a printing studio or like a video production space or like a large office.
And then, artist studio space, and those are semi-private and much smaller. They’re 500 square feet and lower. I say semi-private because the walls don’t go all the way up to the ceiling. There’s no doors. They’re sort of like bays built out from the wall, and so it’s somewhat of a communal space.
Some people might find it easier to build new. Why invest in a space like this?
For many of us, there’s a connection to the city that you feel working in an old space that just can’t be manufactured with a new space. That comes with a set of challenges. Caring for an old building like this, it can be expensive and it can be just sort of strange. You have to put up with some oddities, but I think the benefit you get from working in a place with roots is a benefit that you just can’t buy with money. It’s a bit priceless, especially in a place like South Bend where far too many of these buildings have been torn down.
It’s becoming increasingly important that if you can make what you’re doing work in an old building, that might be the difference between the old building staying or being torn down. To whatever extent it’s possible, I think the city has a lot to gain from people deciding to do whatever they’re going to do in an older building.
What long-term goals do you have for the space?
That’s a good question. Lately, the way I’ve been putting it is that we’re working right now to earn the right to have a grand vision for the space. There’s a lot of small things to do in operating a building like this, which is like keep the current tenants happy, go find new tenants, make sure the internet works and there are windows and doors and locks, which is not all a given. For us right now, it’s making sure that the building works before we sort of have a grand vision. One friend recently — we were talking about this question and he put it as we’re sort of earning our 140th year for the building.
But, I will say that we definitely imagine this place feeling very active during the day. I don’t know how exactly to quantify that. How much space do you have to have filled for it to feel that way? But, I think you know it when you see it, and I think in a city like South Bend where there’s many empty blocks and we don’t have enough people who live downtown for downtown to always feel vibrant — but it does sometimes — I think it becomes increasingly valuable to have spaces where a lot of people are co-locating during the day. We have the potential to do that here.
For a lot of creative and productive people in South Bend, you can get caught sometimes between this question of, Can I do what I want to do here? Do I need to go somewhere else? Do I need to go to some bigger city? One of the big things you get there is a density of people and activity and things going on and, beyond the help that you get directly from those people, even just the feeling of other people doing things around you sort of lifts up what you’re doing and makes you better.
If there is a sort of vision for the space, I think it’s that. It’s, can we create a space that creates some of that environment here in South Bend instead of people being in their basements or in their extra room in their house, which is all fine and I’ve done that. But, I can’t replace the benefit I get from being around other people in my work.
I just think that it’s not just this building. We have a ton of space in South Bend that could be activated to improve the lives and work of creative people.
This is your first time owning a building. What are you learning through this process?
One thing I’m definitely learning is that it’s definitely doable. There’s a growing sense of that, especially in South Bend, with the incremental development movement of people saying, you, normal person, who has never owned a building or anything like that, you could. You obviously have things to learn, but it’s not this opportunity only available to a certain sect of people with real estate experience already.
I’m able to continue to operate my studio while operating the building, and I think that’s exciting to see. That’s a big opportunity for the city, the more that people catch onto that vision.
I’m also learning just how many people it takes to operate a place like this. When the Zikers had been here for 100 years, it was pretty staggering to me when they handed over the keys how many relationships they also needed to transfer of the person who does the plumbing, the person who mowed the lawn, the person who plows the snow. There are many people here in the community who know this building better than I do because they’ve worked here for decades, and they can explain to me where the electrical runs and where the plumbing runs and stuff.
In that way I think there’s a balance between on one side, it’s simple enough that I think anybody could do it. There’s also a complexity to it that is fairly humbling when you’re going through it and trying to keep track of all the details.
What other projects are you working on?
In my studio, I have work that I’m doing as my artistic output, which is photography, and then I have at any given time a roster of client projects I’m working on which are usually in the realm of graphic design, website projects and then video production.