The large building in the middle of the 400 block of South Street has gone through some ups and downs over the last few years. In 2011, Pearl Art & Craft Supplies closed their doors at 417 South St. after a lengthy run, as part of the entire company going out of business. After a few years of vacancy, we heard about a cool plan to turn the building into the "South Street Arts Center" and to create 85 artist studios over the building's three floors. But that project apparently fell through. A dance studio called Millennium Dance Complex opened a location here in the fall of 2014, but they were out of the space by the end of this summer. And today it's sitting vacant.
So what gives with this building? Of late, we've seen this stretch of South Street experience a resurgence of sorts, as many vacant storefronts have filled in (with some still empty, we'll admit). One would think that a large space like this would have an inside track on drawing a credit tenant, but it's been a bit of a slog to date. But there might be a light at the end of the tunnel. A Loopnet posting from a few months ago shows the building was listed for sale for just under $5M. That same posting shows that the property is under agreement. Also, we seem to remember seeing signs in the windows about a month ago advertising the space but we saw no such thing when we passed by yesterday.
So maybe this building is changing hands and the new owners have a sweet new plan for the place. We're largely indifferent about what store that fills the space, we're just hoping that whatever happens the existing Pearl sign is preserved in some way. It's an amazing throwback and a relevant piece of the retail past of this commercial corridor. Has anyone out there heard anything about the new owners for this property? Is there a concept that would be especially exciting for neighbors?