In the Graduate Hospital neighborhood, three dormant corners, all on the same street, are on track to come back into active use in the coming months. Let's move from east to west, just to make it easy to follow.
We can remember when 1536 Catharine St. was a lousy looking corner store, with stucco covering what must have once been large storefront windows. But the space has been vacant for the last few years. A couple years back, developers bought the building and attempted to eliminate the first floor commercial space and convert the property into a triplex. Pushback from the community scuttled that plan, and now they're building a third floor addition and creating two upstairs apartments to go along with a retained corner commercial space. We're hopeful that the owners will punch some bigger holes in the facade to improve the space's street presence.
Moving two blocks to the west, 801 S. 18th St. is also getting some major work done. According to an old listing, this place was once a grocery and a beer store, but as far back as we can remember the space has been vacant. New owners came on a few months back and they're currently converting the building into a single family home. While the property at 16th Street is zoned commercial, this property is unexpectedly zoned for residential use. So the conversion into a home is permitted by right. We just hope they keep the oddly shaped window on the northern side of the building (right above the stop sign in the image below). It gives the building some character.
Moving one more block to the west, we come to the northwest corner of 19th & Catharine. We checked in here a couple months ago, when the owners started working on the property after paying it little mind for a year or two. New window openings were getting cut and a former ice cream shop in the rear of the property was getting a new facade. Today, the building is still getting work done and we've learned that the first floor will be divided into two spaces with a single apartment above. We've heard rumblings about a nail salon, but nothing has been confirmed.
We'll keep an eye out for whatever new businesses might be coming to the properties at 16th and 19th Streets. As for the place on 18th Street, it seems that business won't be happening there any time soon.