Holly Wiedemann:
A Collage of Contradictions
By Gregory King

LEXINGTON, Ky. — Holly Wiedemann is a collage of contradictions. She is an artist and a financial wizard; a real estate developer and a conservationist; a capitalist and an altruist; a career woman and a mother-wife-homemaker.

She doesn’t develop residential subdivisions, or office buildings, or industrial parks, all of which can be immensely profitable for developers. Instead, she finds old, neglected buildings in urban areas and revitalizes them with a new purpose, or builds new structures that blend harmoniously with their surroundings.

The 75-year-old Midway Public School in Midway, Kentucky, is a good example. It had been abandoned for many years when Wiedemann purchased it in 1995 and, with financing from federal and state agencies and conventional lenders, brought it back to life as 24 apartments for independent seniors. Its former cafeteria is now a popular restaurant, the School House Cafe, where Wiedemann arranged for building residents to receive a discount on their purchases.

Commitment is key to revitalization

A similar project in the town of Irvine, Kentucky, came to Wiedemann’s attention as she was completing work in Midway. "A newspaper article about the Midway school had just been published. The wife of Irvine’s mayor had read it and she came to see me," Wiedemann explained. "She said, ‘We have an old school like this in Irvine and we want you to do to it what you’ve done to this building.’ So, I went down to Irvine, which is a lovely community, and took a look. The building was charming and had great potential, and the can-do attitude of the people was inspiring. The entire community had decided to take control of their future in an important way. And that kind of commitment is what makes downtown revitalization possible." The Irvine School Apartments opened in the fall of 2002.

"There were a number of very difficult challenges throughout both of these projects," Wiedemann said, "especially dealing with all the regulatory, financial and building constraints. But their transformation from abandoned shells into beautiful, gracious places to live and important parts of their communities makes it all worth while. That’s what I strive for."

For her work on the Midway School Apartments, Wiedemann won more than five awards, including the Blue Grass Trust Award for Historic Preservation and a Citation for Excellence from the Kentucky Chapter of the American Institute of Architects. For the Irvine School Apartments, the mayor presented her with the Key to the City.

Deep appreciation for old buildings

Wiedemann’s deep appreciation for old buildings has been with her since childhood. A descendant of the founders of the Wiedemann Brewing Company, in Cincinnati, and Purcell Department Store, in Lexington, she grew up in a "lovely old house" in Scott County, Kentucky. She learned the value and techniques of adaptive reuse while working for developers in the historic districts of Tulsa and Boston, where her major accomplishment was helping to redevelop and revitalize Castle Square, a decaying, 500-unit apartment complex that had become a haven for crime and drugs. Also while living in Boston, she and her husband, Bart van Dissel, then a professor of business at Harvard, restored a house that was built in 1730. They sold the place in the early 1990s, when Wiedemann’s father died, and moved to Kentucky with their two children to buy and renovate a farm that had been in the Wiedemann family for generations.

"Over the years, I saw so many old buildings with real character being abandoned, or demolished to make way for new, common structures," Wiedemann said. "So, I resolved to do what I could to stop the waste and preserve those pieces of our history. And that’s what AU Associates does. We transform neglected buildings with character into assets that contribute to their communities. We adapt the use of existing buildings and infrastructure within downtown areas. Thus, the name of our firm, AU for Adaptive Use – or for the symbol of gold on the period chart of the elements. But it’s not just historic buildings that I’m interested in. I’m also interested in how cities work. The whole notion of adaptive reuse and urban in-fill go hand in hand."

Artist and MBA

To prepare herself for her career, Wiedemann first earned a degree in landscape architecture from the University of Georgia’s School of Environmental Design. She then worked in city planning and urban revitalization in Tulsa for five years. "The experience taught me that, to do what I wanted to do and become successful at it, I was going to have to learn to think on both sides of my brain," she said.

And so, at 26 years old, she traveled to Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, and asked the dean of its Fuqua School of Business to admit her. He asked about her skills in accounting and quantitative statistical analysis, and calculus. She said she had none, but could learn such things quickly. Impressed by her self-assurance, the dean said, if she could pass a class in calculus that was to be given that summer, he would admit her in the fall. And pass it she did, with flying colors, and dean kept his word.

"I fell in love with numbers and realized that you can’t separate art and finance," she said. "They’re integrally involved with one another. Urban design, landscape architecture, finance, historic preservation: those are the things I do."

A strong commitment to society

But overarching those things seems to be a strong commitment to society. Asked about this, Wiedemann said, "It was drilled into us from a very young age that it was our responsibility to contribute to the community. I hope that turning abandoned old buildings into beautiful, safe, affordable homes and commercial space is regarded as a contribution, not only to the residents, but to their communities. It’s certainly rewarding to me to be able to help breathe new life into an old structure and have people fall in love with it all over again."

Currently, Wiedemann is breathing new life into the St. Francis, a 120,000-square- foot, mixed-use project in downtown Louisville, Kentucky. Built in 1913 as a YMCA, it is being transformed into 58 elegant apartments, 18,000 square feet of commercial office and retail space, and a 40,000- square-foot, independent high school, St. Francis High School. Also in the works is the conversion of another old school, this one in Glasgow, Kentucky.

A good juggler of career and family

How is she able to manage her busy career and still have time for her family?

"I’m lucky," Wiedemann says. "My family is 100-percent supportive. My children (Britton, 13, and Eliza, 11) like what I do and spend a lot of after-school time with me here at the office. And my husband doesn’t travel nearly as much as he used to. He’s now teaching business at the University of Kentucky and working on a start-up company. Still, it’s a constant juggle, but we’re good jugglers."

A difficult request was saved for the end of the interview. Wiedemann was asked to characterize herself. After several moments, she said slowly, "Hard working ... ethical ... a perfectionist ... demanding ... focused on excellence ... appreciative of good design and art ... hopefully smart ... lucky.
"I’m also stubborn, or persistent," she added quickly. "It’s very easy to give up in this business. It’s very difficult, especially dealing with all the regulations, and it’s fraught with roadblocks. That’s why there aren’t very many developers who revitalize existing structures, or consider urban in-fill development. But I look at it like this: Life is made up of challenges. What really matters is how you figure out the solutions to them and keep loving what you do."