Wilmington contractor’s ‘Old School’ approach makes a historic home for local restaurants

Chris Yermal and his wife Jennifer Holmes moved to Wilmington in 1999 with no jobs. Yermal decided to use his science degrees to become a teacher at Friends School of Wilmington.

“I did construction in high school in the summers, but I never thought about it as a career,” he said.

In the meantime, though, the couple fell in love with their home in Carolina Place, and with the historic neighborhood itself.

“After we bought our house, we bought five or six others, just dumb luck. And we started remodeling them and renting them out. And then I got tired of teaching by about year five and then just did that full time.”

That was the birth of their business Old School Rebuilders in 2004. Since the beginning, all of their projects have been in existing buildings – remodeling and repairing them. One reason is that Yermal believes it's the future of construction in New Hanover County, which has a booming population and limited space. It’s also a green, sustainable way of living and working.

“It was always about preserving these buildings,” he said. “Saving them.”

While his focus started with residential work, it transitioned to more commercial projects, which now account for 60% of what Old School Rebuilders does. One early one was the Next Glass / Untappd office space at 21 S. Front St. It’s when he started working with broker Brian Wallace of Raleigh-based York Properties Inc., and James Goodnight.

One of the first restaurant projects Yermal worked on was Spoonfed Kitchen & Bakeshop near Wrightsville Beach and former The Foxes Boxes in the Brooklyn Arts District, which is now home to The Kitchen Sink restaurant.

He also helped bring On Thyme Restaurant to life on Castle Street and the newly opened Olivero a few blocks away. He was also on the team that won a preservation award for Seabird restaurant at the corner of Front and Market streets, another Goodnight project.

“On Thyme (in what was formerly Booty’s Soul Food) was something straight out of 1979, but it wasn’t bad. There were a couple of challenges, but and we got it done,” he said. “Olivero, it was a dry cleaner at one point and then a laundromat,” he said. They helped add a patio, with in-floor heating, at Rx Chicken & Oysters, also on Castle Street.

One restaurant project has had a way of leading to others. Yermal said the owners of Durham-based Ponysaurus Brewing Company walked into Seabird and wanted to know who worked on it. They are now a part of the team working on their soon-to-open Wilmington location at 214 Market St.

When walking around downtown, Yermal can point out buildings that weren’t renovated, maybe, in the same way he would have done.

“It can be a shame,” he said. “These buildings have a history.”

Yermal enjoys learning and researching these stories. Goodnight, too, is interested in history. It may be one reason that they keep working together. Their latest is in the former Platypus & Gnome and Caffe Phoenix space at 35 N. Front St.

“We have pictures going back to the 1930s,” Goodnight said, with Wallace noting that they were uncovered in research trips to the library. “We have two decent pictures of what the storefront used to look like. We are going try to reemploy some of that.”

“Seabird was a preservation tax credit project meaning you had to save all of the existing interiors of that building,” Wallace said. “This one isn’t but for the most part, we are treating it as one.”

The upper floors have been updated and are now offices. All that’s left is this restaurant space.

“What we are doing now, is peeling back the layers of the three, five, different restaurants that have been in here,” Goodnight said.

Old School Rebuilders has essentially gutted the space. The mezzanine has been pulled out, as has the bar. They are thinking of changing the layout, meaning that the bar may be in a different location when plans for the future are finalized.

But there are challenges. Yermal is already thinking about how they can create an accessible entry. That either involves changing the front door to include a better ramp or lowering the floor throughout.

“It’s the contemporary code requirements for electric, plumbing, mechanical, fire safety, life safety,” Yermal said. “It can be problematic."

But it’s worth it, he said, to continue the history of these building and bring them new life. It's an interest that has carried him throughout his career, and while raising two daughters with his wife, and volunteering during his downtown as vice chair of Wilmington's Historic Preservation Commission and as a construction advisor for Southeast Area Technical High School, or Sea-Tech.

“It’s really nothing we do,” he said. “All we do is execute the plan that others developed, the architects, designers, decorators...

“For me, it’s what they do in the spaces. I love the menus. I love going to all of them.”

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Allison Ballard is the food and dining reporter at the StarNews. You can reach her at aballard@gannett.com.

This article originally appeared on Wilmington StarNews: Wilmington contractor makes space for restaurants in historic buildings