At this month’s SOSNA zoning meeting, Ilkur Ugur, owner of the recently closed Divan, presented preliminary information on his plan to transform a former crack den into a park-side restaurant. The property in question is 2132 Montrose St., and the park in question is Julian Abele Park. Before Ugur purchased the property in March of 2011 for $145K, this building was a source of trouble for the block, and it looked pretty awful as well.

In the past

In the past year and change, the trouble tenants have been removed, and the building has taken on a much nicer appearance with the addition of a mural.

Looking better

But Ugur has a vision for this building that involves tying it intricately into the adjacent Julian Abele Park, which is set to finally move forward with a redesign this summer (hopefully). Ugur wants to convert the building to mixed use, and wants to lease commercial space to a restaurant for park-side dining. At the meeting, he presented several different conceptual drawings for the reimagined building.

Concept 1. The park sure looks nice.

Concept 2

Concept 3

Concept 4

At this time, Ugur has no floor plans, nor does he have a tenant (though he’s in discussions with a couple of different parties). The concept could be solely on the ground floor, or it could extend to the second floor as well. It could involve alcohol, it could not. The one thing that seemed totally clear was that Ugur would not be the operator, as he said something to the effect of “I tried that once, and won’t ever do it again.”

Endless possibilities

The plan was met with support from members of the community and the Friends of Julien Abele Park, but a few near neighbors had concerns about noise, trash, the height of the proposed building, venting, pests, and just about anything else that would concern a person about living next door to a restaurant. While the neighbors expressed their very valid concerns about this project, we got the sense that a middle ground could eventually be negotiated and that a ‘Bedford Cafe’ scenario was unlikely here.

Which is very good news for this area, which is craving additional more neighborhood commercial activity.

And, in general, wouldn’t a park-side cafe just be super sweet?