A few months ago, South St. stalwart Gennaro’s Pizza moved from 1200 South St., to a new location at the corner of Bainbridge and Clarion Sts. The move to their new location, the former home of the King of Clubs, among other short-lived concepts in recent years, seems like a curious choice for a business that has ostensibly survived for the past twenty-five years because of its well-trafficked location on South St. While we wish them the best in their new spot that no one will ever find, we wonder about their former home, currently for rent.

View from just last week

This stretch of South St. is mostly residential, and doesn’t really have any destination businesses until you get to the CVS at the corner of 11th St. or the supermarkets a block further east. Despite this, the corner space gets a lot of foot traffic, with the subway close by and many people using South St. as their walking corridor of choice. The location screams take-out to us, and if nothing else, Gennaro’s sustained presence for so many years proved the viability of such a concept. Could another pizza place just slide into the space? Some other kind of takeout perhaps? We’re not sure who will ultimately lease the space, but we suspect it won’t sit vacant for too long.

Nb: The listing states that the rent at $3300-4000/sqft/mo. For the 850 sqft space, that comes out to $2.8M-$3.4M/mo. If that is indeed correct, we imagine the space will remain vacant, at least until hyperinflation obliterates the value of the US dollar.