Davidson building fire sets Jeff Stanbrough on an unexpected restoration path

A fire on the third floor of the Davidson building in 2024 nudged developer Jeff Stanbrough into a project he never expected to undertake: a historic renovation.

Stanbrough, a third-generation developer, acquired the three-story, 125-year-old building at 108 Third St. in late 2021. The building’s main tenant was Saxton Furniture, which occupied street-level space. Other tenants were on the second and third floors. In spring 2024, what began as a remodeling project to expand space for a tenant unexpectedly changed course. Work came to a halt when stain-soaked rags left by a painter spontaneously combusted, sparking a fire on the building’s third floor.

“After a few months of insurance companies fighting and us not being able to start the repairs, the tenant told us they needed to get things started sooner than later. We couldn’t do that and they left,” said Stanbrough, 49. “We had one tenant left on the second floor and were able to make a deal with them and empty out the building and do a historical renovation.

“This quickly became a legacy project for me that will hopefully be a landmark downtown for many generations to come.”

Historic preservation wasn’t originally part of Stanbrough’s career path. Two years after graduating from Simpson College and being a mortgage broker, Stanbrough joined Stanbrough Realty Co. The company was founded by Stanbrough’s grandfather Gene in 1960 and for several years in the late 1990s was operated by Jeff Stanbrough’s father, Dan.

During his first two years with the company, Jeff Stanbrough mainly leased small bay retail spaces in strip centers for projects his father was developing. During those two years, Stanbrough “got a lot of retail experience and developed a love for local retail” and began developing strip malls around the Des Moines area, he said.

“After a while, Dad said ‘Why don’t you run with Stanbrough Realty?’ so at the end of 2003 I took over as owner/operator,” Stanbrough said.

In the past 23 years, Stanbrough has grown the company to include 41 employees, 15 of whom are licensed real estate agents. The company primarily focuses on residential, commercial and homeowners’ association property management, which Stanbrough describes as the firm’s “backbone.”

“We do everything in our office except sell houses,” Stanbrough said of the company.

After the fire in the Davidson building, Stanbrough wrestled with whether to demolish the structure or restore it. Friends urged the building be preserved, a move Stanbrough ultimately made.

“I’ve had a lot of people ask if I’d sell it, and I think the answer is no,” Stanbrough said. “This is a generational project for me. It’s something I want to pass on to my family.”

Asked what his grandfather would think of the renovation, Stanbrough paused before answering. “He’d probably smile and say, ‘It’s pretty cool.’”

We recently caught up with Stanbrough at the Davidson building property.

This Q&A has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Walk us through how you came to own the Davidson building.

A partner and I sold a strip mall in Norwalk. I had a tax 1031 Exchange so I rolled my [portion of the proceeds from the sale] into this building. I took possession of it in December 2021.

Historical renovations are not easy projects. Share some of the things that gave you pause about moving forward with historically renovating the Davidson.

The process. All the hoops you need to jump through with [the State Historic Preservation Office] to meet all of their requirements. Also, the timing of the process – it’s not very fast. But, talking to others in the business who have done this before, they said, “You just have to do it.” I hired a good consultant (Alexa McDowell) and she walked me through the historical side of it. … I just had to take the leap of faith. I believed in the building’s location and its bones – it’s got beautiful bones. But, being told it could be a two- or more-year process, gave me pause. Most of my stuff is a year or less, start to finish.

What advice did you get from other developers who have done historical renovations?

I talked with Tim Rypma a lot. (Rypma, a local developer, has done several historical renovations in Des Moines including the recently completed Carpenter Paper Co. building at 106 Seventh St. ) He told me to “just do it.” He looked at my numbers a couple times and reassured me that this would work.

You could have torn this building down and built new. Why didn’t you?

I ran the numbers. At one point, I was going to put apartments in here but it was extremely expensive. There’s a lot of apartments being put in spaces that were originally office, which is taking existing office space out of the market. I thought that if I was going to do office, do it in this existing space and reuse this history. It’s such a cool building. The tax credit program allowed me to get over the hump of keeping it as is. The [tax credits] help subsidize, to a degree, the cost of the renovations. At the end of the day, new historical is better than just new. Our market loves historical and this new historical space has a lot of character.

What type of tenants do you think will be attracted to this space?

Attorneys, accountants, engineers, consulting firms. Smaller businesses. This building is a lot like the Carpenter Building (which also is a historic, heavy-timber and masonry industrial structure) and it got leased right away. I think, once we get the windows in and some other things done, we’ll start to see some momentum in leasing.

As you’ve gone through the renovation process, what have you found that’s surprised you?

When the demolition was done and all the walls that had been added were gone, I stood at one end of the building and looked to the other end. I thought “This is cool. It could be a really amazing office.” It was at that point, with the demolition done, that I saw what could be. That happens a lot in real estate. You go into a space and it feels too closed off or too dark. It’s hard to envision. But once you open it up, it all makes sense.

When the project is done, and somebody walks into the building off the street, what do you hope catches their attention?

I think just the expansiveness of the space. Fourteen-foot mass timber construction is probably the first thing they should notice. I think they could walk in and go, “Wow, this is expansive and special.” … I don’t walk into a lot of office buildings and feel the size and the character that I feel when I’m here.

Davidson building fire sets Jeff Stanbrough on an unexpected restoration path

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