Ah, Meglio Furs, one of our favorite buildings on South Broad Street, located at the southwest intersection with Wharton Street. Actually, to be more accurate, the building is just fine, a three-story mixed-use edifice with some intact bay windows and intact cornice. It’s the old sign that makes the building stand out to us, a callback to an era that’s longer gone than the the fur shop business.

Attracted to the old signage, we brought this building to your attention way back in 2012 (yikes that’s a long time ago), noting the awesomeness of the sign, the fact that the store had ceased operations some time around Y2K, and the opportunity presented by this well located but vacant commercial space. We wondered whether a store or a cafe or a corner bar could fill the space, but insisted that any commercial tenant be required, by lease, to maintain the old sign. Meglio Furs Bar and Grill anyone?

Alas, as the years have fallen off the calendar, the building has remained more or less in the same state, with the commercial space continuing to sit vacant. But a reader reached out to us the other day, noting that the space was getting cleaned out. Then another reader gave us the heads up that the property sold earlier this month for a cool million bucks to an owner with the same address as William Penn Realty. With the building now in the hands of new ownership, it’s time to wonder just what will happen with the commercial space. Could our predicted corner bar finally be in the works?

Given the uncertain business environment right now, especially in the food business, we don’t see any retail establishment opening up here in the near term. Eventually, though, we imagine something new and interesting coming to this location. When it does, we will hope that, like the operators of Boot and Saddle and the Dolphin, whoever opens at the former Meglio’s will restore the historic neon sign and incorporate it into their branding. And if they don’t want to, we’ll take it off their hands, somehow, some way.