Segal scores with big shift

Developer’s apartment-retail project, once designed for offices, wins architects’ award

By Roger Showley, UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER

Monday, June 21, 2010 at 11:53 p.m.

“The Q” might have been a seven-story office building in downtown’s Little Italy, empty and begging for tenants.

But when the bottom fell out of the office market, architect-developer Jonathan Segal stopped construction a year ago, redesigned it as an apartment/retail mixed-use project and this past weekend won one of three Honor Awards from the local chapter of the American Institute of Architects.

The $12 million project, completed last fall at 750 W. Fir St., includes Segal’s 5,000-square-foot penthouse residence and architectural office. It was built around a restored Victorian house, said to be the oldest such structure in the neighborhood, and is now leased as Melero. Read full article and blog posts here.