ASHEVILLE - Asheville's historic S&W Cafeteria building is in the midst of an effort to restore it to its former status as a convivial center of community dining.

S&W Artisanal, slated for a December opening, will convene a warren of dining and drinking areas, each with a Greek-influenced menu and each with its own feel within the walls of the ornate art deco building.

Those walls are being painted and layered in some places with real gold leaf. In other places, the decor is relatively untouched, save for a buffing here and there.

The stone steps that descend to the main floor, for example, still bear a gentle dip in the middle from the passage of feet over the better part of a century.

The mezzanine bar, with its spectacular windows, has been reduced in length to allow guests sitting at the upstairs fine-dining restaurant to drink in more of the view.

MORE: The historic S&W Cafeteria building is getting a restaurant, bar and market

Meanwhile, in an adjoining space that once served as the home for Sadie's Seafood Pub, crystals were hung in new chandeliers Thursday in preparation for The Times, one of two bars that will serve S&W patrons, and the first stage of the project slated to open.

Behind S&W Artisanal is restaurant designer Theodore Kondylis, restaurateur Sakis Elefantis and local businessmen Douglas and Kenneth Ellington, the great-nephews of the architect Douglas Ellington, who designed the S&W building in 1929.

The elder Ellington also designed Asheville City Hall, First Baptist Church downtown, the main building at Asheville High School, the Merrimon Avenue Fire Station and others.

With so many of Ellington's buildings in public use, his grand-nephews said the S&W building was the only one they could bring back to the family.

"One of our goals in purchasing the building was to preserve the architectural details and not to make a lot of changes," said Douglas Ellington, who with his brother Kenneth also owns MedStream Anesthesia Solutions. The Ellingtons purchased the building in January for $1.75 million.

"We also wanted to bring in a local business that was similar in purpose to the S&W Cafeteria building's first use as a cafeteria, but with an updated concept."

Ellington said it was also important to nurture the underutilized building back into a bustling hub of activity from breakfast until late at night.

"We want to see it used as a gathering place for people of the community, and one that adds to the vibrancy that already exists downtown," he added.

To that end, S&W Artisanal will have numerous zones for dining and drinking, from The Times bar with its mid-century modern chairs to the wood-paneled private dining room that overlooks it, which will be outfitted with the technology to host board meetings.

Additionally, the second-floor mezzanine will serve as a space for fine dining. The gleaming black bar will serve craft cocktails and some Greek liqueurs, cordials and wines.

But the centerpiece of the space will be the market and cafe, which will be open daily for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Elefantis said the space will be brightly lit, with shelves lined with products shipped from Greece, including top-tier olive oils, herbs, spices and condiments.

There will be a space for ordering coffee and espresso, a spot where bakers knead dough on marble-topped work tables, another area laden with classic Greek pastries and cookies. There will be another steam table space, where employees will serve Greek soul food dishes like moussaka or spanakopita, for dine-in or takeout.

"There will be food everywhere," Elefantis said, adding that the restaurant group is not trying to reinvent the wheel, but rather revive the S&W's spirit, just for the modern diner.

The finer details of the menu are not yet available. That the building itself will at last be open again to the public is perhaps almost as important as what dishes will be served under its ornately-tiled ceiling.

"This beautiful building for years was underutilized and dark most of the time," said Doug Ellington.

"We want to turn the lights on and see people enjoying it," added Kenneth Ellington. "That's what it was built for."

The S&W building, a classic art deco beauty, has stood sentry over the intersection of Patton Avenue and Haywood Street since 1929.

Over the years, its popularity as a center of entertainment for the city waxed and waned.

But its heyday was during the time it served its original purpose: as a home for Asheville's S&W Cafeteria, which first opened in the old Asheville Opera House on Patton Avenue in 1922, before moving across the street to 56 Patton Ave. in 1929.

Asheville's location was one of the most successful of the chain of eateries, which were founded by Frank O. Sherrill of Flat Rock and his friend Fred R. Webber, who together ran the tearoom in the J.B. Ivey Department Store in Charlotte.

At the height of its popularity, the cafeteria served 3,500 people daily in the winter months, a number that could swell to 5,000 in the busy summer months.

That's at least what L.R. Bowers, the manager of the cafeteria, told an Asheville Times writer named Katherine Gaines in 1954.

How did Bowers handle such an operation? Apparently with meticulous planning, including daily meetings held before the restaurant opened, with all department heads discussing the forthcoming weather, the previous day's food consumption, even the local and national news. A headline about a polio scare in 1953, for example, kept diners away all summer.

With such planning, Bowers's food waste was minimal, Gaines reported, claiming the cafeteria threw away "far less each day relatively than the average housewife who has four to feed."

The S&W building went dark in 1974, when the cafeteria moved to a new location at the Asheville Mall, where Sherrill, who had by then bought out Webber's share, debuted an innovation called the S&W Carousel Buffet, a contraption based on a revolving wheel system used at the Pentagon, purported to serve 19 people in 45 seconds.

"It eliminates the great long serving line, the bugabear of our business," Sherrill told an Asheville Times writer in 1973.

But the Asheville Mall location was unprofitable and shut its doors in 1981. Sherrill blamed the carousel contraption for its downfall.

"It's something that works well in school cafeterias and industrial plants," he said. But customers did not like it. "The wheel moved too quickly," Sherrill told a reporter.

Meanwhile, the S&W building endured its own revolving door of businesses, home to Dale's Cafeteria in 1976 — and only that year.

The closing of that venture left the building "vulnerable to the penetration and (habitation) of destructive critters and birds who left their mark on the aging downtown mainstay," the Citizen-Times reported.

The S&W building was added to the the National Register of Historic places in 1979.

In 1983, Walter Ploeger Jr., an Arden industrialist, bought the building for at least $204,000 and then paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to renovate the historic landmark.

In 1996 Preferred Catering opened in the building, hosting wedding parties, receptions and large-scale dinners and galas.

A cafeteria service was revived the following year. Then came a live-music venue called Shotzy's. The upscale S&W Steak and Wine restaurant also opened in the building for a stint before filing for bankruptcy.

Nothing has stuck. And Doug Ellington said the large spans of inactivity the building has endured have not matched the vitality of downtown Asheville.

"This building used to be a gathering place for many in the community," he said. "The stories longtime residents tell of downtown is that it was vibrant in the '20s and '30s. Now it's vibrant again, and we hope to add to that vibrancy — and be a part of it — once again."