Dr. Erik Burgwald, O.D. started seeing patients in his newly renovated location at Burgwald Eye Center in downtown Mahomet on August 4.
The full-service eye center is open Monday, Wednesday and Friday 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., Tuesdays 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. and Saturdays from 9 a.m. to noon. Burgwald said as the Mahomet location grows, he will provide more doctor hours to meet the needs of patients. Burgwald Eye Center also accepts most medical and vision plans, along with Care Credit.
Burgwald already provides optical services to many Mahomet residents at Jones Optical located in Champaign. He hopes the Mahomet location will provides some of his current patients with the convenience of being seen in their home town. Burgwald Eye Center also accepts new patients.
The building in which Burgwald Eye Center now operates, 417 East Main Street, has been owned by many different individuals practicing a wide variety of occupations.
“Thomas Rea first built on this site in 1867 when he built a drugstore,” Mahomet Historian Greg Pasley said. “By 1875, the drug store was destroyed by fire and rebuilt. He then engaged in the dry goods business until retiring in 1920. After his retirement the store was then operated by William Hill, a son-in-law, then by Olie Polson. It later became a laundry mat.”
Many Mahomet residents have memories of standing in line outside of Marilee Hoffswell’s Earthsight waiting to purchase the latest Beanie Baby or to get a personalized beaded keychain to adorn a backpack. Shari Eubank, a long time pianist was the proprietor of the Harmony Road Music Studio of the same location in the early 1990’s. For a short while part of the building was even use for meat cutting.
Instead of choosing a building in a new commercial development, Burgwald chose to invest in beautifying an original building in downtown Mahomet, a project that Josh DeYoung of DeYoung Design and Build Inc. was eager to take on.
After beginning the project, DeYoung found some days “he wished he could forget.”
DeYoung had to replace severely rotted floors from the days of the Laundromat and the charred roof rafters from the Great Mahomet Fire that swept thru the downtown decades ago.
One day during the renovation DeYoung even woke up a few hibernating brown bats that were nesting between the layers of the old brick walls.
From the planning stage to completion the project took DeYoung several months. Despite long days filled with surprises that came from undertaking a project in such an old building, DeYoung and his team are very proud of the end result.
DeYoung is most proud of the way they “safely removed the entire north wall of the building. This (removing the north wall) was the most technically demanding part of the entire project because the wall was supporting thousands of pounds of the original brick walls above which had to remain in place.” DeYoung believes this work yielded the “greatest impact on the feeling of space due to all of the light that was brought into the building.”
Burgwald, a Mahomet resident, said that the thing he most learned about himself through this long renovation was “to be patient and to have faith”.
Now that the renovation is complete, Burgwald is awarded the opportunity to “do whatever he can to help his patients” in a new-old building that is oozing with history.
To schedule an appointment with Dr. Burgwald call (217) 586 1726.
