world seek out Frond Design Studio’s one-of-a-kind fabrics that are awash with bright and lively hand-generated designs. Eco Lips, which began as a kitchen hobby in the 1990s, is now a full-blown manufacturer of organic lip care products, “making its way around the world, one set of lips at a time.” Mortuary Lift designs and sells body-lift equipment to funeral homes and mortuaries around the globe, and maintains an office on the second floor.

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Four people who work in the building also live there. Photographer David Van Allen came to the building in 1997, attracted by the neighborhood and its possibilities.

“I just wanted to be in a community that had some artists in it,” he said.

Now 64, he retired from the Mount Mercy University art faculty in 2012, aftera new life in 1976 when he purchased the mammoth structure for his welding supply business.

With 104,000 square feet at his disposal, he hoped to lease out the space he wasn’t using.

HACAP was one of the early tenants, siting its kitchen and offices there. Professional photographer Rod Bradley created a studio and living quarters on the third floor in the late 1980s.

Theatre Cedar Rapids moved its scene shop to the back of the third floor in 1989, and of those early tenants, remains there, leasing about one-third of the top floor for scenery construction, a drafting studio and a storage/paint room.

Where pigeons once flew freely, the fully renovated structure is aflutter with human creativity, attracted by 12-foot ceilings with exposed joist work, full-length factory windows on the first