The Chatham square apartments formerly the “Inn-Towne Motel” was a place that had no significance to me because I did not know what it was, and neither did any of my friends. The Chatham square apartments were one of the buildings that I was sure to take a picture of while on the walking tour. It was interesting to me, because of the parking under the building and its location “right in the heart of town”. Also I was not sure what it was and wanted to find out if it was an office or an apartment or what.

It turned out that the once Inn-Towne Motel changed to the Chatham Square apartments around 1980 when it was sold to Lloyd Management Corp. Also this is a very good example of adaptive reuse, where the owner used an old motel to make apartments, instead of just knocking down the old motel. The Chatham apartments are located on 500 South Second Street next to Prudential Action Realty. You could live there while looking for a house. There is also the Multi-Church center across the road on Second Street. So if you are a church goer, you would have no excuse to miss! It is also provides a nice landmark.

These apartments are right in the middle of everything in the downtown area. There is the Earl Johnson Furniture and bedding super store, and best of all, you are right next to the Barbuda triangle! This is a famous node in Mankato that consists of three bars: Choppers, South Street, and TJ finagins. One other thing that you are next to is the restaurant BW3, which is another landmark. So if you lived at Chatham Square apartments within walking distance, you would have the bars, restaurants, movie rental, grocery store, realty, and a small shopping center. If you like to live where the action is, this is the place to be.

The Chatham Square apartments are up and running, but all 38 apartments are rented till at least next year. These apartments are owned and managed by the Lloyd Management Corp. with a market value of $764,400. There are 1 bedroom apartments with 1 bathroom that cost $355 a month, and there are also 2 bedroom apartments with 1 bathroom that cost $400 a month. In these apartments, the management pays for the water, sewer, and trash. But the tenet must pay for the phone, cable, and electric. The electric is a bill that will be an expensive one, because there is electric heat. As you can see from the picture, the parking is in a very close spot right underneath the apartments. You can also see in the picture above that there is an open space in the middle of the apartments for balconies.

As far back as I could find, the Chatham Square apartments have not always been called the Chatham Square apartments. They once were called the Inn-Towne Motel (around 1963) when they started building the motel. When the owner, Mr. Hall, first had the idea for the Inn-Towne Motel, he had to go through a lot of legal procedures like every new builder does to start building. One was to get a building permit for that lot. There were also permits needed to cut the curbs to make entrances and driveway exits. Another permit was required for the steam heating and air conditioning. What the city wanted to know is if he would like their services and if the owner was reliable about the information on the pressure of the steam and where the pipes were. There was also talk about a swimming pool. The city wrote that the pool needed to be 15 x 30, containing approximately 17,000 gallons of water. The city wanted to know if they would be draining the water into the storm sewer, rather that the sanitary sewer. As you can see, there were a lot of things that the owner had to go through to start up this motel.

Before the motel was changed to apartments, there were even more permits to go through even just to sell the motels to remodel for apartments. However, the plan was eventually accepted by the city. There was a lot of remodeling done by Lloyd Management Corp. All of these changes are a good example of adaptive reuse. One of the big changes was that there was an elevator put in around 1989. When this happened Lloyd Management had to go through another series of permits. The permit for the elevator stated that they needed to have many smoke detectors in weird spots and that they needed to come up to code to the smallest detail.

When I went out looking for the Chatham square apartments I passed it in my car not even knowing they were there. It was weird because it stood out so much to me on the walking tour. Now when I pass the Chatham Square apartments, I will look at them and think of how this building is an example of adaptive reuse because they were once the Inn-towne Motel. I will understand all that the building has gone through and all of the permits that were needed to get it there. Also I came to understand Mankato’s way of adaptive reuse of a building and why it’s important to reuse them.

Chris Challenger F01