So I guess the talks of someone buying the divine Lorraine have died down?

[eldondre]

On a one-hour tour of the building - starting on the roof and ending in the dank basement that used to be a Prohibition speakeasy - Blumenfeld saw nothing but potential.

"This is like the Titanic," he said, his black dress shoes crunching over shards of glass.

Blumenfeld said he hopes to include historic tax credits in financing for the project. But that will require him to spend more than $1 million to bring the lobby back to its former grandeur, with speckled columns and mirrored archways.

As part of any financing package, he also would set aside about 25 units as affordable housing.

Despite the damage, Blumenfeld said, the bones of the 118-year-old building remain strong. "Every nook and cranny of this building is wildly interesting."

Read more: The view is Divine
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cool, had no idea about speakeasy.
I'm all ready to bitch about beury

[BarryG]

Garces to the Divine Lorraine?

[darthsinatra]

Garces to the Divine Lorraine?

I revel in others' successes. No one gets more excited than I do when people win on The Price Is Right, for example. I don't have an envious bone in me. But I can't be the only person wondering when Garces' empire will be revealed as some elaborate and over-leveraged shell game or something. The growth has been too explosive too quickly. I hope I am wrong but I remember Neil Stein too.

[mja]

I revel in others' successes. No one gets more excited than I do when people win on The Price Is Right, for example. I don't have an envious bone in me. But I can't be the only person wondering when Garces' empire will be revealed as some elaborate and over-leveraged shell game or something. The growth has been too explosive too quickly. I hope I am wrong but I remember Neil Stein too.

I think you might be the only person. Neil Stein was really into recreational pharmaceuticals, while Garces strikes me as a very serious businessman, much like his former employer, Starr, another guy that created an empire in a very short amount of time. Only difference is that Garces just also happens to be a world class chef. Avenue B brought Stein ultimately down and nobody went there. Garces' places all draw.

[BarryG]

I think you might be the only person. Neil Stein was really into recreational pharmaceuticals, while Garces strikes me as a very serious businessman, much like his former employer, Starr, another guy that created an empire in a very short amount of time. Only difference is that Garces just also happens to be a world class chef. Avenue B brought Stein ultimately down and nobody went there. Garces' places all draw.

I'm sure the Garces empire has a lot of debt but the way Starr works and I think Garces is that each restaurant has a different group of investors under a different LLC, so the risk is spread.

[mixiboi]

No, Avenue B didn't take Neil Stein down. His drug problem, not paying his staff, and doggin paying his taxes is what brought him down....

Its what separated Garces and Starr from him...

[mixiboi]

Here comes the pushback:

North Broad Business neighbors worry they will be pushed out by Divine Lorraine project

Sitting on the porch of her lovingly-renovated home, looking out over her garden, Crawshaw talks about what she thought when she saw the map — which shows a Shared Visual Arts Complex where she is now. There are some trees sketched in, Crawshaw points out, and she wonders if they'd keep her fig and cherry trees.

"When you think there's a designer or an architect or an architect's assistant sitting somewhere pointing out plans for your block on his or her CAD system and then hovering the cursor over your building and then hitting click and then — poof — your building doesn't exist anymore — and you had no idea," said Crawshaw. "You know you're just a dismissible detail on somebody's plan. It's just weird."

Crawshaw says she has not spoken with the city or the developer's office but she has talked to other neighborhood residents.

Just a few minutes walk away, two more building owners are worrying. Tina Rocha and her husband run the Cerulean Arts Gallery and Studio on Ridge Avenue — right across from a former homeless shelter.
"We have homemade decorative arts," said Rocha. "So jewelry, vases, baskets, we have local artists, fair trade companies, something for everyone."
Rocha says the pair poured themselves into renovating this place.

"We thought the neighborhood had so much potential. So we wanted to be part of a community that is seeing its re-birth."

Rocha, who works at an architecture firm, says the couple knew it would take time for their gallery and the neighborhood to grow. What they didn't expect was seeing a map of the area that appears to no longer include their building. She points to the map that doesn't show her building, "We're right in the Commons. So we're right smack in the middle of the block here."
Rocha says she's not sure what to do now.

Had to correct the title,because its not the Section 8 homes around there that are worry about being push out...yet...

[eldondre]

actually this isn't the divine lorraine project but the apparently separate school project behind it...and certainly people are upset about their house being knocked down, that's pretty normal.

[the mule]

If the city is willing to take scattered lots in Point Breeze for some nebulous future development plan, they certainly wouldn't have any problem condemning a few houses to allow for the development of public schools by a serious developer with a concrete plan. These people have a real uphill battle ahead of them if this plan gets traction.

[mixiboi]

Like the Convention Center expansion...

[thoth]

If the city is willing to take scattered lots in Point Breeze for some nebulous future development plan, they certainly wouldn't have any problem condemning a few houses to allow for the development of public schools by a serious developer with a concrete plan. These people have a real uphill battle ahead of them if this plan gets traction.

Fairly certain the city has dumped all of the lots in the PB plan that had active owners. They generally shy away from condemning actively used parcels...mostly because it creates a **** show like you saw in PB.