Despite having lived in many places in the United States, Virginia native Jeremy DiMaio keeps coming back home. Having grown up as a military brat, he’s been around, having lived everywhere from Ohio to California. He worked for a time in Human Relations and at one point decided to get his masters in the field. He elected to pursue his post-grad work in Hawaii, because … why not?

It was while he was in the middle of grad school that he decided he didn’t actually want to work in HR anymore. He came back to Virginia where he operated a wash and fold laundry service for college students in Charlottesville. The business was hugely successful, and he found himself with some money he thought he might like to invest … perhaps in real estate. A house in town had caught his eye. It was a strange house—a combination of what Jeremy calls “mid-century modern and 70’s porn aesthetic.” He wasn’t sure he actually wanted to live in it, but he liked it enough to buy it and decided to rent it out in order to offset the mortgage. He renovated it and listed it as an Airbnb. The experience was a positive one. Here he was saving an interesting bit of semi-historic architecture and at the same time facilitating a happy place for people to come and to celebrate. What’s more, the property is consistently occupied. In the six years he’s owned it, it has never stood vacant.

With that success under his belt, and with a little more money to invest with, Jeremy next purchased two tiny houses in Afton which he also converted into vacation rental property. Soon, his real estate enterprises were becoming his primary business, and he left the laundry business. He quickly began investing in other properties.

Then one day a friend of his posted a listing for a church in Danville on Facebook and shared it with him. He put his daughter in the car and came down to see it. He’d always thought it would be fun to own a church, and the building on Jefferson Avenue had so much potential. He couldn’t help but be intrigued by the possibilities.

He asked his daughter what she thought of it. “Do you think I should get it?”

“No,” was her answer, “but I know you will.”

And so he did!

The present church edifice is the third iteration of what was originally the meeting place of the Presbyterian church. The first building, a wood frame structure, was built on this site in 1828 and was the first church erected in Danville. In 1853, the wood frame building was replaced by a brick one, in which was placed the church’s first organ. By 1879, the congregation had outgrown their building, and a new one was erected, possibly enveloping the former structure rather than totally replacing it. After the completion of the Greek Revival structure on the corner of Sutherlin Avenue and Main Street in 1910, the Presbyterian congregation moved out of it and it became home to the First Christian Church which occupied it (under various names) until 2004 when it was purchased by Homeretta “Homer” Ayala, a church organist from Maryland. In 2008 it became the property of Mary Branzei, and though some improvements were made during its private ownership, the building stood empty for several years prior to Jeremy’s acquisition. (Read more about the Church’s history here.)

The project is as much an exercise for Jeremy’s overly-active mind as it was an investment opportunity. He figured he’d buy it, work on it, and maybe live here two days a week. Instead, Danville has become his second home and the center of much of his social activity. He’s here every other week and compares Danville to “a college town for the middle-aged.”

Indeed, his growing affinity for Danville led him to buy a residential property for himself. He recently purchased the Bendall house and is presently revitalizing both properties at once.

Jeremy loves the neighborhood and his neighbors and has made some wonderful friendships with those in the community. When he’s not socializing with his neighbors or working on the Bendall house, he’s at the church building, preparing it to receive its first guests. He’s hoping to open the doors of the Church of the Perpetual Boogie sometime next year.

For more images and to follow the progress, check out The Church of the Perpetual Boogie on Facebook and Instagram.