Couple at work on Commercial loft project

John and Jennifer Luce are hard at work on a renovation project at 302 E. Commercial St., and for them, design services are not a problem: He's an architect with Hood-Rich Inc.; she's a design engineer for Malone Finkle Eckhardt & Collins.

The Luces purchased the building on Commercial, built in 1904, to create what they could not find in Springfield.

They have a house in Springfield that they had remodeled on a small scale. "We enjoyed that, with the exception that we had to live through it," they said in an electronic interview. However, they added, "We are both urban' people who thrive on contemporary/modern architecture. We didn't feel that we could build a conventional house in town that would be what we wanted."

The Luces knew people who had bought buildings on South Avenue and Commercial Street and built lofts, and "the more we thought about it, the more we thought that that kind of lifestyle would be great for us. This building just came to us at a good time."

The couple has demolished most of the interior of the first floor with the exception of the bathrooms and the cellar removing walls, acoustical ceiling tiles, a tin ceiling and the plaster covering the brick walls.

"We are planning to do the same upstairs, which we hope to start this month. The upstairs will become a modernist loft which we hope to move into in about two years or so. We would like to rent the lower floor as a commercial space," they said.

The 96-year-old building has its own special challenges, such as working with the space restrictions at the back of the building at the alley, and splitting the utilities and mechanical and electrical systems so that each level is a separate entity.