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Show Volume One Thursday, August 14, 1980 Number 23 Face-Lift for it. Air Mali Larry Chambers saw the Mount Air Mall on Park Avenue as, in his words, "a diamond covered with carbon." The three-year-old structure started out as a storage area (the west wing was a warehouse), then became an office complex with a red paint job that made it look like a barn. The new coat of gray is only the beginning of renovations. Within two or three months. Chambers hopes to convert the building into a glistening structure with new glass and carpets, double-decker parking, and lush greenery a magnet for visitors and tenant-businessmen. Chambers is the general managing partner for the mall's owners. But his interest in Mt. Air Mall is personal as well as financial; it's a refuge in the mountains for him. He's an executive vice-president for E.F. Hutton, semi-retired, semi-retired, with $5 million of his original accounts. He likes to deal with them from his mall office and he can, via a phone system linked with Hutton offices in Denver, Salt Lake, or New York. A customer calling The Big Apple easily can be transferred to Park City, "and the client doesn't even have to know I'm up here in the mountains," Chambers Cham-bers said. Chambers is planning his own office space with a playful concern for privacy. At present, he is kept busy as a brokermall manager though he just hired and ex-Hutton cashier to oversee the mall) and he shares an office in the east wing with three other tenants. But he plans to move into a back room next door to that office. On the separating wall is a huge photo of a jetliner, which will loom over his secretary's desk and subtly disguise the doorway he'll cut out of the wall. Chambers said he's even thinking of poking a few eye-holes in the plane's cockpit in order to discreetly peer at customers. To each tenant his own. But Chambers, Cham-bers, as the mall's ramrod, is making certain broad changes. His offices has a sliding glass door with a southern view up into the mountains. "I drag my Mexican patio furniture out here," he said. 'This is where I do my best thinking." Chambers wants to install glass doors all along the southern end of the building. In the architectural scheme by Richard Chong, the present parking lot will be replaced by a two-deck structurea struc-turea 40 percent increase in the parking area, according to Chambers. The parking will be separated from the road by islands of lawn and trees, where now you find ugly-looking asphalt and gutters, and a garden pathway also will serve as a buffer between the parking and the east wing of the building. Visitors can enter the builing from the new lot via three doorways, but the entrance into the top floor of the west wing, soon may become the most popular. Roayl Street Land Company now occupies that space, but when they move to offices in Deer Valley, that area likely will become a restaurant. With the lower slope of the roof done over the glass, diners will enjoy en-joy a relaxing view of Park City scenery. (That's not the only window work. A transparent bubble located at the corner of the building's "L" shape will be replaced by stained glass.) The bottom floor of the mall's west wing will become a sports shop run by former Wolfe's veteran Jan Peterson. The shop will face Park Avenue with a series of display windows. (In view of state plans to repave the road in the near future, the mall's display is one further step toward making Park Avenue a pleasant driving experience). Chambers said he plans to repaint and recarpet the interiors for his tenants, tenan-ts, who number, at present, 12 companies, com-panies, including insurance firms, real estate offices, and a furniture shop. "I'm getting phone calls every other day asking about space," said Chambers. Cham-bers. Indeed, he has raised the value of the mall property so much, he now can raise rent from $5-6 a square foot to $12-$4. Chambers is trying to attract a variety of tenants a mix of commercial commer-cial street-side attractions with professional offices for doctors and dentists. This borker-cum-developer likes to act as if he can barely keep up with his workload and all the while, he is busy developing other projects. He i Mt. Air to S |