The neon sign on the KY Market building on South Sixth Avenue is glowing again with a tweaked message.
Where once it proclaimed “Super Market,” it now reads “Brink Super Marketing” and “Brink.com” has replaced the “Beer/Wine” sign.
The neon letters “KY” on the stucco tower attached to the brick building have been kept and restored. The facade has been scrubbed of graffiti. Windows have been replaced.
Inside, the midcentury-modern market has been gutted and adapted for use by a crew of Web-savvy marketers led by Brink.com President Danny Vinik.
Vinik and his wife, Mary Ann Brazil, had been quietly outgrowing their firm’s headquarters in a residential neighborhood in downtown Tucson for the previous 15 years.
Vinik walked by the abandoned market one day and saw a “for sale” sign.
It was already under contract, but that deal fell through and Vinik and Brazil secured a small-business loan to buy and renovate the building. He said he spent twice the $125,000 purchase price on renovations.
It now supports the most of the firm’s 16 employees with room to grow. “This is double the space we had,” said Vinik. Brink also has an office in Washington, D.C.
Brink creates websites, films, apps and social media campaigns for its clients. Vinik is a “film guy” who produced and directed movies before creating the firm.
One of his early accounts was actor Kevin Spacey, for whom he created a site called Trigger Street to host and promote independent films.
The transformation of the building is important for a number of reasons, said state Rep. Demion Clinco, D-Tucson, president of the Tucson Historic Preservation Foundation.
The building is “a rare example of a Chinese market built in a midcentury style,” he said.
The sign restoration is a good application of amendments to Tucson’s sign code that allow adaptive reuse of historic neon signs.
It is also a good example of a private enterprise helping to transform the nature of a neighborhood by rehabbing a building that was “blighted,” he said. “In my mind, it’s really terrific to see Danny Vinik and Mary Ann doing the right thing, instead of just tearing it down and building something new.”
Vinik and Brazil were pioneers in revitalizing downtown Tucson. Brazil managed the Congress Hotel from 1985 to 2000. Vinik managed Club Congress for much of that period.
Vinik said the ongoing revitalization of downtown is “exciting, with the light rail and all the development. Tucson is starting to get real about business.”
He said the redevelopment of Congress and Broadway is starting to have a spillover effect on neighboring areas.
“I think that the grass is always greener on the other side of downtown. As Congress Street becomes more mainstream there will be movement this way.”
“We’re already seeing it,” Vinik said, referring to the 5 Points Market & Restaurant and Cafe Desta, a few blocks north where South Stone Avenue and South Sixth Avenue merge at 18th Street.
Clinco said the new businesses are countering “a sense of disinvestment” along South Sixth Avenue that contrasts with the “neighborhoods coming back to life” in the adjoining blocks.
Vinik’s building was designed by noted Tucson architect Terry Atkinson, whose biggest contribution to Tucson’s Modernist movement was Tucson International Airport. Atkinson’s original design for the terminal was obscured by a series of renovations and additions.
Architect Chris Evans, head of the Modern Architecture Preservation Project, said the KY building was not one of Atkinson’s notable buildings. “It’s a nice building but not something that rose to the level of a high priority for preservation,” he said.
“I think the best aspect of that project is that somebody has gone in and found another use for it,” Evans said.
Vinik, in addition to rehabilitating the signs, restored the casement windows. Workers sand-blasted the scribed brick to remove graffiti and laid new tile beneath the store windows on the front.
The 4,000-square-foot building was gutted and left completely open except for the bathrooms at the back and a glass-walled conference room in one corner. The back entrance features a Zen garden.
The building was on at least one “endangered” list. Artist Dirk Arnold, who makes architectural models of Tucson buildings and signs that he wants to see preserved, featured the KY Market in his “Endangered Tucson” show two years ago at the Etherton Gallery.
Vinik, after he bought the building, immediately contacted Arnold and purchased the model.
Vinik has become a student of the building’s history. He bought it from the daughter of the man who commissioned it, Henry Lowe.
Lowe had Americanized his name but used the initials of his Chinese name — Kwok Yan Low — for the market and its sign.
