And we were thinking a WeWork space, a concert hall, beer garden. No shortage of ideas on what to do with the space.

But after seeking, you know, consult and advice, we realize that residential is the best path forward for this building.

Welcome to Bowtie High (in) Homestead, Pennsylvania.

My name is Adam Colucci. I'm 35 years old. I own an audio video company and I'm a real estate investor.

My name is Jesse Wig. I'm 35 years old. I'm a real estate agent and a real estate investor.

My name is Dan Spanovich. I'm 42 years old. I'm a real estate developer and a lawyer.

We bought an abandoned high school at Homestead, Pennsylvania for $100,000 and converted it into 31 apartment units.

A one bedroom apartment rents for about $1400 a month and a two bedroom rents for $1600 a month.

I was made aware that the high school was for sale from a local individual.

I live in this area and they know I'm involved in real estate, so the building was brought to me off market.

Originally, they were asking $225,000.

I put the property under contract initially at $175,000.

After inspections, I was able to get them down to $100,000.

So we split all of the profits and the expenses based on our proportional share in the project.

We started renting out the units at Bowtie in October 2021 before we had the building completely finished and it took us about six months to lease up the building.

All the money we make from Bowtie, we're reinvesting into the Schwab school, which is right across the street, obviously, until that construction is finished.

My role here at Bowtie was designing the layouts of the apartments and trying to minimize plumbing stacks to lower construction cost.

I also worked closely with the National Park Service to make sure we got historical tax credits on the building.

The main things were to keep the historical significance of the exterior of the building and the hallways of the building.

My role here at Bowtie was primarily around the overall design of the building, the finishes that we used in each apartment and a lot of the common space was designed by me as well.

My role in the project was essentially boots on the ground, construction management of the project.

Going into the project, we were certainly concerned with the finances and the construction cost.

We didn't know what apartments we were going to rent for in the area, and actually in the beginning, we were funding it with our own money.

We had a bank lined up to fund the project and they backed out last minute on us.

So we had to do a scramble and find a second bank to fund the project.

I think our biggest mistake on the project was underestimating the cost it was going to take to do the renovation.

Initially, we budgeted about two million for renovation and in the end, it cost us about three million to do the renovation.

I'm not sure we would have done the renovation in the beginning if we had known what it was going to take.

When you walk in the double doors in the front of Bowtie, you'll notice the 12-ft high ceilings, the original porcelain crown molding, the Terrazzo floors, and the 10-ft wide hallways.

(This is) probably the most dramatic feature of Bowtie High. This is the original auditorium.

We restored this space pretty much from ruin. All of the plaster was failing and we rebuilt that, (and) kept all the original flooring in the space.

Everything's been professionally furnished.

This old bookshelf came from the space and we were able to incorporate that back into the auditorium.

Here's the gymnasium. On this side, we did free weights and cardio equipment and we decided to put up this scrim netting to kind of make the space not so large.

There was bleachers on the left and bleachers on the right that we converted to storage units and we wanted to leave the original basketball court here.

Tenants are allowed to come, use this and shoot any time they want.

Welcome to the one-bedroom, one-bath, 750-square-foot apartment.

When you first walk in, you're gonna see that we're gonna flow into the kitchen here.

We have quartz countertops, we have white subway tile.

Also, you're gonna see a custom open shelving.

We have stainless steel appliances and this L-shaped kitchen allows to like really maximize the space.

As we continue on, it flows into the living room.

As you know, this was a classroom before, so we were able to keep the original chalkboard and I think it's a cool element of the building.

We have super tall ceilings, probably 12-ft ceilings and massive windows as well.

And this is the full bath here.

A couple of design choices we went with a circle mirror, one bar lighting and the hexagon tile.

And entering into the bedroom here, as soon as you come in, you're going to see a ton of natural light.

We have windows on almost every side of the room.

We have a bunch of closet space, full walk-in closet with washer and dryer as well.

I would say in the beginning, Dan and Jesse were both hesitant to get into it.

I knew that we needed to have it in our portfolio mainly because when you look out the front windows, that's what you see.

So we could control what we see.

Our mortgage on the Schwab School is about 3.25 million, but we'll probably need more than that to finish the construction.

The Schwab School has been a much more challenging project than Bowtie High was. When we bought it, it was in much worse condition.

When Schwab is complete, it will be 33 apartments.

Some of the amenities there will be in-unit washer-dryers, indoor parking, there will be a rooftop deck and a common lounge on the lower level.

Welcome to our next project.

This is the Schwab School.

You'll see this amazing staircase.

We're actually going to do a five-tier chandelier here, beautiful gigantic windows with natural light.

So we're here on the second floor of the Schwab School.

We've got about seven units per floor in this building.

We've kept the original classrooms as one unit per classroom.

We've got all the original doors throughout here and this is the original hallway with the archways.

I'll bring you into one of the units here.

So we were able to keep the ceiling height which is about 14 ft in these units.

We're also able to save the concrete floors which we refinished.

I'll take you through the bedroom space here.

We tiled those walls in the bathroom, sort of to pick up the look of these concrete floors as well.

Huge windows throughout this space.

All of these windows are four ft by eight ft tall.

So we've got an elevator going in here. It's gonna service all of the floors.

Mostly one bedroom throughout the building.

And these units will look out onto eventually what will be our rooftop deck above the parking garage.

Most of the people in the community couldn't be happier with the renovations that we've done.

These buildings sat vacant for a long time and a lot of investors passed on them before we came along.

Jesse is only investing in this community.

You know, I mean, there are better places, more popular places to invest in Pittsburgh than in Homestead.

You know, you're choosing to invest only in this community, which, you know, that's special about this property.

Renovating Bowtie High has made a big impact on many people in the community and myself included, I live in this area.

So I'm invested in this area, not only financially but from the aspect of "I live here and I want the area to continue to improve."