and things went downhill from there

I don't normally take to stalking businesses around our office, but this place has become a bit of an obsession for my co-workers and me. Part of the fascination is due to the fact that the building across the way seems to have trouble hanging onto clients, and this corner suite has been vacant since Pinkie's "Pizza" closed rather suddenly under unusual circumstances a few years ago. (I put the word pizza in quotes, because based on the curious activities we witnessed around the place, we were fairy certain that pizza was not its main line of business. Even though they made pretty good pizza at a ridiculously low price, we were more than a little convinced that their primary source of income was more in the distribution of narcotics and laundering of money.)

The place has sat empty for years, with a lonely sign in the front window announcing that it was for lease. In early October of last year, a banner appeared on the side of the building (see first picture) announcing that a new restaurant was going to be "Coming Soon!". This was very exciting news, because there is a dearth of dining in our area after 17:00, and the hours of operation assured us that there would be greasy chicken and pizza available for people on all three shifts. Two weeks later the lease sign in the window vanished, but there was no further sign of activity.

October passed, and much of November went by with no further sign of activity. Finally in late November, one of my co-workers spotted some men on the roof, cutting a hole. "It looks like they're putting in ventilation for the pizza oven!"



At the time when they were cutting that hole, the only thing adoring the roof was the rusty AC unit closest to the outside wall (the other units are above other businesses in the strip). They fixed a tall vent into the hole, and there was no further activity for another week until they came back and replaced it with the squat vent that is there now (second vent back). As the year rolled into December, we began to more activity. People started coming and and going from the restaurant, including somebody from the phone company. The next day my co-worker tried calling them to see when they were planning to open.

"... how did you get this number?"
"... ... it's on the big banner on the side of your building..."

They told him that their plan was to be open by the following weekend.

There was no further activity until January.



In January they started adding more stuff to the roof. I wish that I had taken this picture yesterday before fresh snow covered up all of the tracks. They began adding pipes and lines, some of which they removed the next day, and then replaced the following week with longer ones. They added vents, and then remove those vents and put different vents in their place. Then over the course of a week or so they added the... thing. It's big and boxy, with a large vent coming out of its bottom, and lots of wires feeding into it. My co-worker is convinced that it is a furnace. Whatever it is, they had it all opened yesterday while an inspector of some kind poked and prodded around inside it and made notes on a clipboard.

The place is coming together so slowly that I am almost afraid that they might go bankrupt before they ever open for business. None of us are expecting great food out of the place, but we all plan to hit them up for lunch as soon as they open. At this point I'll settle for "greasy and adequate".