The restaurant Tiramisu occupied the double wide property at 528-30 S. 5th St. for a number of years, offering what the proprietors referred to as Jewish-Roman food (whatever that means) just a few steps off of South Street. The restaurant shut its doors a few years ago, but the business and the building have been on and off the market for many years. There’s an old listing that goes all the way back to 2002, offering the business as a turn-key opportunity, with followup listings in 2008 for $1M, and in 2009 for $2M. Nobody was interested, despite the “12 crystal chandeliers hanging and 12 matching sconces” mentioned in the listings.

The property finally traded in 2010, with the buyer paying just shy of $1.1M for the property. Though the restaurant operated for a few years after the purchase, it seems these owners had redevelopment in mind when they bought the property. In 2013, the owners got approval to build an addition onto the property and expand the apartment unit count from three units to eight units. The next year, they got a variance to up the unit count again, this time to ten units. But no construction has taken place at the property to date. Well, maybe that’s not an entirely accurate statement.

At some point in the last couple years, the owners of the property gutted the building, leaving it in shell condition. Perhaps they had every intention of moving forward with a renovation, but sometimes things come up and now this is what the building looks like inside. Perhaps then, we shouldn’t be surprised that the property is coming back to the ZBA yet again, this time with a completely different plan. According to the application, the developers wish to demolish the existing building and replace it with a six-story mixed-use building with retail on the first floor and 22 apartments on the upper floors. Though such a building would rise much higher than the surrounding buildings, it doesn’t seem like much of a stretch from a zoning perspective, given the generous CMX-3 zoning designation at this address. And let’s face it, there’s just not much harm in a taller structure this close to South Street.

Consistent with its history, the building has been listed for sale this year, at an asking price of $1.3M. We don’t know whether the zoning application is coming from the developers that have owned the property for the last few years or from someone new that’s looking to buy the property. Given the shaky performance by the current owners in terms of making something happen here, we’re hopeful that it’s new folks working to redevelop the property. If not, we’ll still be pleased to see something happen here which will add to the density near the commercial corridor. We haven’t seen drawings, but we’re hoping that the newest plan will pay tribute to the existing building and perhaps include some arches on the first floor. It would certainly be a nice callback to a unique architectural feature of a building that seems certain to face the wrecking ball.