20779 Holyoke
by Larry Werner
When my wife, Ann, and I moved to Lakeville, we immediately became interested in the downtown. Shortly after Darci and Todd Juniper opened their coffee shop, I rented office space above the coffee shop for my marketing business.
One day when I stopped in for a latte, Darci told me the Clay Cottage Ceramics building was for sale across the street. Within a day or so, we had signed a purchase agreement for the hundred-year-old storefront, with an addition that was built in '93.
Our idea was to renovate the building in conjunction with the renovation going on next door at Smith Dentistry. In fact, the granite columns at the entrance of our building were once part of the building next door that the Smiths bought for their expansion.
We hired a friend, Ron Jansen, who does store buildouts and renovated the building from front to back. The old plywood front was replaced with brick and display windows, as prescribed in the city's design guidelines for downtown. While we were working on the building, we were approached by Robert Joswiak, who was looking for space to open a State Farm agency. Robert worked with Ron Jansen to renovate the back of the building, adjacent to the parking lot, to accommodate his needs.
Since we are part of the family that owns Heritage Links Golf Club, we opened a golf store in the front. We called it Heritage Links Main Street. However, that was always intended to be an interim solution to filling the space on the street with retail. When we were approached by Mary Jane Konnad, a Lakeville artist, about renting the space to her for a gift shop, we closed the golf store and Prickly Pear Gallery and Gifts was born.
The history of our building is foggy. We're told it's housed a restaurant and was actually a residence at one time. Frankly, I haven't had the time to do the research on what it used to be. However, it originally contained a tin ceiling that was hidden above the sheetrock ceiling that was there when we bought the building.
Ron Jansen found a reproduction tin ceiling that matched the pattern in the original ceiling, and two of the schoolhouse globe lights that hang in the store were hanging from the original tin ceiling. A third came from the Smith building, and the one hanging in the entryway came from an old Lakeville school.
The reproduction tin ceiling and original light fixture.
The Downtown Lakeville Business Association special service district is a non-profit organization supporting the preservation and redevelopment of historic downtown Lakeville. Questions? Comments? Please email Judy Tschumper, DLBA Executive Director.
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