Businessman transforms loft into 1930s-era speakeasy

An aficionado of the 1930s-era American Mafia, Michael Whitehead claims he was born in the wrong era. And by the look of his two-bedroom loft, located inconspicuously above Overmountain Outdoors on Tipton Street in downtown Johnson City, he is probably right. Whitehead and the interior design team of Todd Fields and David Mallory recently finished transforming the second-story flat, which previously served as a dental lab, into one of Johnson City's most extraordinary private-living quarters. The stairwell at 106 Tipton…