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WILKES-BARRE — A bare shell.
That was the state of 152 Horton St. in South Wilkes-Barre before Steve Taren pegged it as the new site of his graphic and design business.
Taren, 57, owns and operates Wet Paint Printing & Design out of the location. Before he purchased the property last year, the former South Wilkes-Barre woodworking warehouse was fully gutted — abandoned for five years as looters stripped it clean of anything remotely valuable.
“Every wire, every piece of copper, even the water meter which is made of brass, they were all gone,” Taren said.
No matter. The Wilkes-Barre native said he’s building from the ground up, hoping to transform the 100-year-old space into a thriving, colorful part of the neighborhood.
For the makeover, Taren tabbed Dallas artist Leigh Pawling to paint a mural on the side of the building. Vivid graphics cover the formerly plain — or smashed — windows surrounding the building’s exterior.
Next, Taren said he plans to paint the street-side of the building black, then run several different colors of Japanese-style brush strokes through it.
Taren said the 32,000-square-foot building was more than enough space for his business, so he began exploring ways to get use the leftover room.
Earlier this month, Wilkes-Barre’s Zoning Board approved his pitch to use the property to house an indoor storage business for 52 cars and motorcycles. The property will be monitored by security cameras and hold cars and motorcycles only, he said.
Each feature is to maximize space and get the most use out of the building.
“The idea is that there’s life now in the neighborhood,” he said. “This place is a canvas.”
‘Win-win’
Mayor Thomas Leighton said it was a “win-win” for the neighborhood and the city of Wilkes-Barre.
“It’s another good sign of a major investor in the southern part of the city who is taking an old manufacturing building that was pretty much obsolete, and would continue to deteriorate if he didn’t resurrect it, and making use of it,” Leighton said.
Leighton said some of the vacant properties in South Wilkes-Barre were ideal for business owners.
“It’s a great opportunity for businesses to move into the city at an affordable rate,” he said.
Taren acknowledged the property is hard to maintain. It’s much easier to open a business in an industrial park, he said.
“When big factories like this were built, they weren’t in the middle of neighborhoods,” he said. “They were here alone and the neighborhoods built up around them.”
But now, they’re all falling apart, he said.
Instead of looking elsewhere after the business outgrew its former location, Taren choose to stay home. The new venture is just a few blocks from the spot where he opened his first factory in 1991 — a much smaller, 10,000-square-foot second floor space on Waller Street. All told, the Meyers and Wyoming Valley West high school graduate has done business in the neighborhood for over 20 years.
Then, all Taren had was $5,000, a dream and a garage.
“Anyone with that can start a design business,” he said. “After all, that’s what I did.”
But Taren soon realized to separate himself from the competition, he needed to purchase state-of-the-art design equipment and zero in on a specialty.
Niche in cutouts
Today, about 90 percent of the company’s income comes from the design, printing and shipping of life-size cardboard cutouts, he said. The work space is often populated with a slew of characters ranging from NFL quarterback Peyton Manning to Ralphie from “A Christmas Story.”
Taren said the company maintains about 50 active websites specializing in other graphics products. The shop also provides screen printing, installations and custom bar coasters, jigsaw puzzles and coffee mugs. They ship to buyers throughout the U.S. and Canada.
As soon as the weather breaks, Taren said he’ll turn his attention back to the outside of the building.
“Life and color, that’s what this is about,” he said.