She was dying, tired all the time.

Nights brought no relief. That's when the cockroaches were worst.

"They crawl on me and I can't sleep," she said.

Her partner had respiratory disease. He would struggle up the stairs, which were littered with spent condoms, bottles, mouldy food. And squatters who wouldn't move.

"They're stoned or something," he said, "so I try to get around them."

Her name was Terry Szeminski. His, Bill McCall. They found peace long ago. I visited them in 1988 on King East at Emerald, in the Centennial Apartments.

I went back to the Centennial in the spring of 1997, looking for an angle on the federal election. Instead, I heard about stabbings and prostitutes under back porches. And I stumbled on a break-and-enter in progress.

Now, nearly 20 years later, it's back to the Centennial one more time.

From the outside, it looks pretty much the same. But inside: rebirth, salvation.

Al Frisina Jr., or AJ, is named after his grandfather who, in the '70s, put up Hamilton's tallest building — the 44-storey Landmark Place at Main and Catharine.

Frisina is 29, but knew the grim history of the Centennial. He looked past that. So did business partner, Mario Nesci Jr., who also has family history in the trades. They've known each other since high school at St. Thomas More.

"We were looking for the same thing," Frisina says, "something where we could make a difference."

They loved the lines of the Centennial. The perfect project. Their fathers first told them not to do it, then to "make sure you do it right."

There are two more partners, brothers Joe and Mark Accardi of Red Brick Rentals, a property management company. The four paid $1.3 million for the building and are spending another $1 million on renovations — plus investing another $1 million or so in the building beside it.

The Centennial went up a hundred years ago. Three storeys, eight storefronts, 16 bright, roomy apartments. A family could live well here.

In the early days, at street level, McKillop Grocery was here. Crawford Millinery. Kaufman Cleaners. Longfield Bicycles. Elite Candy. Ley-Clair Toggery.

Fifty years on, that piece of the street still lived. In the mid-1960s, the Centennial's commercial tenants included Harkness Meats, Tilbury's Hardware, Agro Fruits, Wilmot's Pharmacy.

Then the core started its long slide. Hope sagged, stores closed, pipes leaked, cockroaches came calling.

When Frisina and Nesci and partners started out, they planned to work around the tenants there, doing a unit at a time. But they soon realized they would need to clear the building.

The Centennial was a drug hub. Dealers, users, lost souls of every kind wandered its halls. The police came by often, sometimes with flash grenade and battering ram.

It took six months to sweep the place clean. And exterminators were called. They rolled in nine times in three weeks, sprayed hard. The war was over.

The Centennial got a new roof, new boilers, new fire escapes and back decks. Each apartment was made new. New floors, new bathrooms, new kitchens with granite counter tops. The units are deep and spacious, with copper ceilings, sun tunnels, bay windows.

At the back, sex workers used to service their johns on picnic tables in the shadows. Now the rear parking lot is lit up like Tim Hortons Field. Cars aren't getting broken into back there anymore.

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Apartments go for about $1,300 and rent as quickly as they're renovated. Tenants are from Hamilton, Toronto and Brantford. Restoration of the last few units is underway.

The front of the Centennial is next. New entrances, custom-made at $7,000 each to fit the historic arches, are going in right now. New storefronts are coming.