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GREENSBORO — At first glance, you think it’s just a room.

It sits across the railroad tracks on South Elm and occupies 2,400 square feet of exposed steel beams and bricks painted white. It’s our city’s newest meeting space, and you can bet it’ll spark some unforgettable nights.

But look closer and a different picture emerges. You’ll find two easygoing Southerners, Allen and David Broach, a father and a son whose close relationship became even closer because of their work with this room called Studio B.

They own three rental properties together. But they had never attempted to renovate something this big — and this costly.

David always heard it in his dad’s voice. That subtle tenseness. His dad is a numbers guy, and the numbers worried him. The final price? More than $400,000.

They laugh about it today. But the two have been through much together. So this was nothing new.

David, a painting contractor and a 36-year-old father of two, survived open-heart surgery at 15. He remembers his dad sitting beside his bed and telling him constantly, “When you get through this, everything will get better.’’

It did. For a while. David overcame an alcohol and drug addiction at 22.

But he also remembers that time at age 12, when his dad took him and his younger brother, Derik, for a long walk in Winston-Salem.

Allen told the boys he was gay.

“I don’t know how this’ll look in black and white, but growing up the son of a gay man and all the ridicule you fear from others,’’ David says. “But at my age now, I don’t fear it at all. I embrace it. It made me who I am.’’

Allen, 61, a longtime advertising executive, has spent more than three decades raising money and awareness for the marginalized and alone.

He’s also spent nearly four decades dealing with the nightmares from a faraway battlefield. He’s a Vietnam vet. He went in 1969.

He never thought he’d come back.

He did — with three flight medals for combat, two Purple Hearts for his wounds and two Bronze stars for his valor and meritorious service.

He was a tunnel rat, a demolition man, a platoon sergeant in the Army who fought with the Air Rifle Platoon in the 1st Infantry Division.

That was 39 years ago. But for Allen, the emotions are as fresh as yesterday, enough for him to pause, breathe deep and pause again when you ask him for details.

He’ll talk about the 30-minute documentary he’s working on about his Vietnam experience.

Right now, he calls it “A Bad Day For The ARPS.’’ He’s been working on it, on and off, for more than 35 years.

Why?

“To make it go away,’’ he says, crying. “And it never will.’’

Allen made his name in advertising. He worked for various agencies and furniture companies before he opened his own agency in 1982 and moved into the old Salvation Army headquarters on South Elm in 1986.

That’s how it began. Along the 500 block of South Elm. And that brings us back to this room, this place called Studio B, a former gym behind the second-floor offices of Allen’s agency.

Last Thursday, a ribbon-cutting ceremony drew 150 people, a crowd of black and white, gay and straight, young and old. There, in the middle of it all, stood Allen and David. And there, they hugged.

They were done. At least for now.

“I’m a lucky dad,’’ Allen says today in a voice barely above a whisper.

Just a room? Not quite.

Contact Jeri Rowe at 373-7374 or jeri.rowe@news-record.com