Over the years, we've occasionally passed by the shuttered Par Four restaurant at 2201 Penrose Ave., wondering when and if it would spring back to life. The other day, when we visited Siena Place around the corner, we were again reminded that this place exists, and it seemed like a nice idea to bring the property to everyone's attention. So here you go:

View of the former restaurant

Looking up Penrose Ave.

This business has been closed since at least 2007. We did some digging about the property and discovered that it's been listed for sale a couple times over the years, most recently last year for $1.1M. But there were apparently some issues with back taxes or liens, because it sold last summer at sheriff's sale for $835K. And the new owners are not waiting around to get a new tenant into their building.

Last week, the owners went to the ZBA (and got approval) with plans to demolish the building and replace it with a new two-story commercial building with six commercial spaces and a fifty car parking lot. Looking at the zoning application, it seems that one of the commercial spaces will contain a take-out restaurant with a drive-thru, and the other spaces will contain businesses that may include offices, clothing, medical, a sit-down restaurant, or financial services. The lot has over an acre of space, so it's got plenty of room to accommodate all of that. We were thinking that with all the residential development that's happened in the area that homes or an apartment building could have happened here instead, but additional commercial also makes sense.

We don't know about any of the businesses planned for this shopping center, but we'd imagine that the developers presented this project to the community. Has anyone out there heard anything?