Bob's Resource Website
Studebaker Buildings -
Walkasha, WI
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Though well-settled in suburban digs, two couples who owned collections of vintage cars bought and renovated run-down commercial space in the city of Waukesha. Now living in second-floor showcases above first-floor showroom-style space, they're part of a show themselves: "reZONED," an HGTV program that features commercial spaces converted to homes. Vicky Hekkers never imagined her dream home would be an old Studebaker dealership. But that's where she lives now, with husband Tom and several whole and a few partial classic cars.
"This isn't the Waukesha that it was 10 years ago, when you could walk a block and not have a business that was open," said Vicky Hekkers.
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Tom and Vicky Hekkers looked for years for a space large enough to house Tom's 10 cars before finding the former Henry Israel Motors Studebaker dealership. It took them two years to renovate the 1946 building, but now they've got space to play with: nearly 10,000 square feet of auto showroom, work room and second-story residential loft. It wasn't easy. They had their vision: lots of windows, pocket doors and partial walls, but their architects had another. "They kept saying, 'Oh, you don't want that,' " says Vicky Hekkers, "and I said 'I don't? Oh really? How silly of me to think that's what I want!' " Three architects later, they ended up designing the space themselves. Now, atop the Art Deco curved-window façade of the Studebaker showroom is a clean-lined living space that Tom Hekkers describes as "a blend of Mission, Prairie, Contemporary and Oriental."
