by George Hohmann

A company established by the founder of Triana Energy was expected to close today on its $1.2 million purchase of the six-story Boll Furniture building at 900 Virginia St. E.

“We expect to take possession of the building on Sept. 1 and look to convert it to Class A office space,” said Henry Harmon, founder of Triana Energy. “We’ll primarily use it ourselves.


“We’re doing this because of our company’s success and the fact we’re outgrowing our space in the United Center. We hope to make something here that can be of benefit to Charleston as well as service our own needs.”

The buyer is Doublet Enterprises Limited Liability Co., a company Harmon and several other investors established in October.

The company plans to put “a significant amount of money” into the building to bring it to Class A standards, Harmon said. “For the most part, the exterior probably will remain unchanged.”

Mike Harmon, Henry’s son, is leading the renovation project. He said the exact cost of remodeling the 60,000-square-foot building should be known within the next several weeks when the architect and contractors finish their estimates.

He added they won’t know when the building can be occupied as office space until remodeling plans are finalized. One complicating factor: the property consists of two structures that were made into one over the years, he said.

Paul Tennant of Associated Architects Inc. in Charleston is project architect.

Henry Harmon and other former executives of Columbia Natural Resources formed Triana Energy in 2001. Triana bought Columbia Natural Resources from NiSource Inc. in 2003 for $330 million and sold it to Chesapeake Energy Corp. in 2012 for $2.2 billion.

Following the deal, Harmon and some of his associates moved from City Center West to the United Center and continued doing what they had been doing — exploring for and producing natural gas in the Appalachian Basin. They formed several new companies. One of them is Highlands Drilling Limited Liability Co., a natural gas driller that has about 70 employees in southern West Virginia and Kentucky.

Harmon said Triana Energy and related companies have a total of 20 employees on several floors of the United Center at 500 Virginia St. E. The building is fully leased, so there’s nowhere to grow, he said.

A major selling point for the Boll Furniture building is the fact there’s a city parking garage across the street, Harmon said. “We’ve been told it has plenty of space available,” he said.

The furniture building is about 100 years old. Local historian Richard Andre said the building did not appear on 1890 maps of the city but is listed in a 1907 city directory.

“In the 1907 city directory it was listed as Noyes and Thomas Co.,” he said. “I presume them to probably be a wholesale furniture house.”

The furniture building “had a peculiar sprinkler system that had pipes put water on the outside instead of the inside, which is standard now,” Andre said. “When they had the huge fire across the street called the Rose City Fire in January 1946, old timers have told me they credited that sprinkler system with perhaps saving that building. It was an interesting sprinkler system that sprayed the outside of the building and kept the sparks and so forth off of it.”

Boll Furniture Co., a Charleston mainstay for 69 years, announced last month that it is closing. The company is conducting a going-out-of-business sale. Boll Furniture has been in the building at the foot of the South Side Bridge since 1974.

Contact writer George Hohmann at business@