When Doug Price purchased Citizens State Bank in 2016, he knew he had a fixer-upper on his hands with the Ouray branch.

Put into service in 1898, the building at the northwest corner of Main Street and Sixth Avenue was leaning. The floor sagged. The systems that lit, heated and cooled the building were decrepit and unreliable.

A $400,000 remodel became a $4 million historic preservation project.

“I think the building would have fallen down without it,” Price said.

That effort, which not only created a modern, functioning facility in which to do business but also much-needed affordable housing and public gathering spaces, garnered Citizens State Bank a State Honor Award from Colorado Preservation Inc. last month.

The award, one of four handed out this year, is intended to “recognize projects that are excellent examples of historic preservation in action,” Colorado Preservation Inc. Executive Director Jennifer Orrigo Charles wrote in an email.

In its former lives, the Office Block building, as it’s known, served as a bar and a hotel before Citizens State Bank acquired it in 1919. Previous bank owners in the 1960s reconfigured the outside of the building, encasing it in brick and turning the large, arched windows on the second floor into squatty squares.

Using tax credits and state historic preservation grants, bank leaders removed the brick to expose the original Mesker facade and iron work. The original arched windows were restored.

The bank upgraded to highspeed internet and implemented an interior remodel to create a modern, open feeling while retaining historic elements. The original vault — reconditioned and repainted — remained. A century-plus-old clock was refurbished and placed in the lobby.

The bank also built public restrooms into the new building and converted an outdated apartment and old office space upstairs into four new apartments. Those apartments are now leased to employees for no more than a third of their annual income. Up top, a wraparound, rooftop deck hosts a variety of community events.

The project was completed in 2019.

Bank President and Chief Executive Officer Alexander Price said the project fits in with Citizens’ motto: “Yesterday, Today & Tomorrow.” It preserved the history of the bank while also bringing it into the present and preparing it for the future.

“We took a historic structure, honored its history and made it usable for our community and for ourselves,” he said.

Charles and Doug Price both noted that without tax credits, the refurbishment of the bank wouldn’t have been possible.

“Doug Price and the team at Citizens Bank undertook great efforts to bring back the exterior of the building to an earlier period using historic photographs and discovered original elements,” Charles wrote in an email. “In particular, with this award, CPI wanted to recognize this work as well as bring light to the importance of the State’s Historic Preservation Tax Credit that made this project possible.”