WB Landmark

At the intersection of Stone Street and North and South Lumina avenues in Wrightsville Beach is an art deco building that has stood for seven decades. The town was incorporated in 1899.

The Saffo building has been home to numerous businesses since its construction in 1948, including an ABC store.

More currently, the downstairs has been occupied since 2006 by Tower 7, the late restaurateur and philanthropist Josh Vach’s popular Baja Mex Grill, a part of his Live Eat Surf restaurant chain.

The upstairs over the commercial space has seen numerous iterations over the years from living quarters, partitioning and upfitting for real estate and construction offices on the southern side, and unfinished and unconditioned storage for Tower 7 on the north.

After two years of permitting and a year and a half of construction, the upstairs has been turned into a trendy rental location known as the Tarrymore, after the Tarrymore Hotel that stood on the site in 1905.

Later renamed the Oceanic Hotel, the grand hotel with 125 rooms, bath house, bowling alley, saloon, billiard tables, and a 4,000-square-foot ballroom burned to the ground on Jan. 28, 1934, along with most of the buildings on the northern part of Wrightsville.

The Saffo building is a late art deco style with masonry and stucco built for Greek restaurateur Anthony Saffo (1892-1966), his wife Anastasia Vassilaros, and sister-in-law Argiro. The Saffos were natives of Icaria, (sometimes spelled Ikaria) a 98.6-square-mile Greek island in the northern Aegean Sea.

The building stayed in the Saffo family for 73 years before the building and its parking lot were sold three years ago to 1 Stone Partners, a father-and-son partnership of Joel and Ross Tomaselli and Luke Waddell with Evan Barton.

The Tomaselli group also converted the upstairs space over nearby Hallelu into residential. The ground floor of that historic building facing Wings and Waynick Boulevard has been home to the women’s boutique since 2005.

“My office was upstairs of Tower 7,” Waddell says. “I had been renting from Doky Saffo for years. I would jokingly tell him I wanted to buy the building. One day, he said OK.”

Doky is the father of Wilmington Mayor Bill Saffo.

“I knew it was historic to Wrightsville Beach, a quintessential piece, in my opinion,” says Waddell. “We had a vested interest in the continuation of Wrightsville, and a desire to add our thumbprint to it in some small way.”

The C-1 zoning district had to be modified to ease off-street parking requirements. A mixed-use, special-use permit was sought to allow residential use in the upstairs part of the building.

The upstairs apartments were damaged in a fire. Half of the space remained uninhabited and unconditioned. Some of the stud walls were still charred.

The partnership worked to breathe life back into the building, giving yet another season in the history of Wrightsville Beach.

“For us, this was a very local project,” says Ross Tomaselli. “Cadence Realty leased the offices upstairs.”

Barton, one of the partners, received a Tower 7 WB Live Surf Scholarship to UNCW in 2016-17 through an endowment begun in 2008 by Vach, a 1987 graduate of the university.

“It’s a really cool project for me to be a part of,” Barton says.

It was about owning a piece of his childhood.

“Growing up in Wrightsville I spent my time in the water, surfing,” he says. “Everyone I know, I know from surfing on Wrightsville Beach. We’d always end the surfing evening going to eat at Tower 7.  I’ve been eating dollar tacos there since I was 13 years old. It was one of our favorite places to hang out.”

For the Tarrymore renovation, the interior stairwell was relocated to the exterior. A hallway and shared lobby were created upstairs to serve three rental units.

Tanner Konrady did the construction, Lindsey Cheek of Gathered Group the interiors.

“Obtaining a Wilmington Historic Foundation plaque was a process,” Ross Tomaselli says.

Receiving a plaque from the Wilmington Historic Foundation requires a research and application process complete with history of the site and all transfers of ownership by deed over the decades. 

“To be eligible, a building has to be 75 years or older, or, if located at one of our beach towns like Carolina or Wrightsville beaches, the building has to be 50 years or older, maintaining its historic architectural integrity,” says Karla Barros operations coordinator and staff liaison to the plaque committee for the Wilmington Historic Foundation.