Synygy will occupy nearly half of the building's 380,000 square feet. The Chester Power Station was the most lavish of a series of beaux-arts power plants built along the Delaware and Schuylkill Rivers between 1903 and 1925. The concrete, brick, and limestone power plant possesses beautiful arches, classical moldings, and, in the cavernous turbine room that Synygy will soon call home, huge limestone rosettes in the vaulted, 100-foot-high, skylighted ceiling. "Because the building itself is so grand, what's inside doesn't really have to be grand," says Stiffler, who envisions a rather simple but very modern design, an inspiring contrast of new and old. Synygy will also take over one of the plant's two nine-story coal towers and transform the bottom floors into an employee fitness center and the upper floors into private apartments for Stiffler or corporate guests.
"Being on the water is also important," says Stiffler. "We're going to use wireless technology on the property so people will be able to go outside and work -- sit in teams at tables with umbrellas along the river in a very peaceful, productive setting."
The Motel-Cum-Summer-Place
CEO Deborah Rivera was already rehabbing a Manhattan town house, a longtime dream, when she bought a dilapidated 1950s cinder-block motel on the north fork of Long Island -- a purchase she'd never dreamed of at all.
The 41-year-old founder of the Succession Group, a management-consulting and executive-search firm for financial-services companies, bought the motel in lieu of a summer home. "A lot of New Yorkers who don't have a summer place in the Hamptons book the same hotel or motel room every weekend in the summer," she says. She and her husband now do the same at the stylishly renovated, 15-unit Greenporter Hotel and Spa, in Greenport, N.Y. Rivera hired noted architect Wendy Evans Joseph, who provided a modern, loftlike feel to the rooms, the wine bar, and the bistro. In went a heated swimming pool with a lap lane. A conference center, an underground spa, and 13 more rooms will be ready in September.
"It's like having my cake and eating it too," says Rivera. "I have my wonderful place and can have friends out in the summer by my beautiful pool and have dinner in my beautiful restaurant, and instead of the overhead of maintaining a summer home I have an income-generating property.
"Maybe it's different for women than men," she muses. "I want to see my security. I want to touch my security." And the old concrete motel, it turns out, may testify to her financial acumen and business skills even more than her company does. "If I send people to my Succession Group Web site," says Rivera, "and they don't understand derivatives and tax structures, it goes in one ear and out the other. If I send them to the Greenporter Web site, they can see and understand exactly what I've built."
The Grand Hotel (Rescued)
A funny thing happened to Kevin Craffey on the way to building a family compound of vacation homes. He became distracted by heading a drive to amend a state constitution and spearheading a quixotic, $20-million restoration of the historic, 200-room Mountain View Grand hotel, the former pride and joy of tiny Whitefield, N.H.
The 38-year-old Craffey has a habit of stepping off intended paths. He left school in the ninth grade, lied about his age, and joined the carpenters union, where he thrived. In his early twenties, after studying nights and getting his high school diploma, he founded his own subcontracting company, K&J Interiors, which has grown to 400 employees. He added a second company, Craffey & Co., to build theme projects such as skateboard parks. Four years ago he felt it was time to sink some of his fortune into a family retreat where he could build a house for himself and his wife, Joanne, and have plenty of room to later build houses for each of his three young children. A real estate listing in the Sunday Boston Globe caught his eye:
Handyman's Special: Wrap yourself in colonial revival architecture while enjoying spectacular mountain vistas. Situated on 360 acres of pristine wilderness, this grande-dame New Hampshire inn features 200+ bedrooms, conference facilities, 9-hole golf course and more. Needs TLC. Priced to sell at $1.3 million.
The compressed version of a very long and uplifting story is that Craffey paid cash for the property and the hotel, which had stood empty for years. He had every intention of demolishing the hotel but changed his mind when townspeople convinced him of its local stature and the impact that restoring it might have on the community. Tougher than the actual restoration work, which Craffey personally directed after moving his family to Whitefield, was making the numbers work. Craffey had to be sure that he could restore and reopen the state's oldest hotel and run it as a viable business. He pushed for a change in New Hampshire's constitution to garner tax relief, wrangled grants for water and sewer upgrades, and at the 11th hour secured $1.7 million in tax credits essential to swinging his bank mortgage.
In March the hotel lights shone after dark for the first time since the Mountain View closed, in 1986. The warm, reassuring glow from scores of windows was visible from the hilltops for miles around and presaged another glow. "When we open, I can't wait to see the joy on the faces of people who love this place," says Craffey. "Lots and lots of people worked here. Couples met here and were engaged here. When the hotel closed, the town lost its soul. This is not my building as far as the town is concerned. It's theirs."
John Grossmann, a frequent contributor to Inc, is based in New Jersey, where his home is constantly being renovated. But minimally.
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