A little over a decade ago, Victor's Tavern turned into Sidecar Bar & Grille on the northwest corner of 22nd & Christian, giving the gentrifying Graduate Hospital neighborhood a gastropub to call its own. The years have gone by and the surrounding neighborhood has improved significantly, though some vestiges of the old neighborhood remain. One such callback is the laundromat on the northeast corner of 22nd & Christian, a one-story building where a business was still operating until sometime last year.
The property has changed hands a couple times over the last few years, most recently trading about a year ago. The current owners are now looking to demolish the old laundromat and replace it with a four story mixed-use building. Well, at least that's what we discovered the other day via a Loopnet listing. Per the listing, the building will include a roughly 1,300 sqft restaurant space on the first floor with what we'd guess will be apartments above. This building would dovetail nicely with the Ultimo building a block to the north at 22nd & Catharine and the planned mixed-use building on the southeast corner of the same intersection. Check it out, it would be a great addition to the neighborhood.
The listing indicates that it will be available in March of 2018, a mere 13 months from now. We don't see that any permits have been pulled as of yet, and we'd think that the project will require a variance, so that timeline might be a tad aggressive. Even so, we're excited to see this thing get built, provided it can get the needed approvals. And for what it's worth, this building would seem like the logical gentrification omega to the alpha that was the Sidecar opening back in 2006. We wonder what kind of restaurant would be a good fit for this location…