Fill This Front: Tangerine

232-34 Market Street

             Continuously in use for 7 decades then... SIX YEARS EMPTY!?!?!? What the hell is going on here? I know this space was not really available for most of those six years... but now its been available for nearly 2 and its still sitting there doing nothing. Now's the time. Let's Fill This Front!
             As with most Old City storefronts, going all the way back to the beginning of this storefront's life would take forever... the building predates 1860 for fuck's sake! I'm going to start in the 1930s, when this location started being a Horn & Hardart Automat and stayed that way all the way until 1971. In 1972, the Tarshich Family's hardware store, Stanley Hardware Company, moved here from the 1800 block of Market. The store was called Stanley not because of the Stanley line of tools, but because its original location was near the Stanley Theater. That store location stayed open for 21 years until being bought out by another hardware store in 1993. That new hardware store lasted until 1997.
          In 1998, there was a movement to rebuild this area of Market Street, spearheaded by an architecture firm located in the same building as this storefront (MGA). The old hardware store space was restored back to a restaurant and went up for lease the next year. In 2000, Steven Starr's Tangerine opened at the space and was not only well-reviewed, but highly successful. Here's a slideshow of the interior when it was open. It managed to last all the way until August 2009. For the next four years, it was used as a catering/kitchen/occasional event space and finally came available in March 2013.

2007 view from the Google Streetview Time Machine.

          Nearly 2 years later, the motherfucker is still sitting there empty. But why? This location gets an insane amount of foot traffic by tourists during the day (especially in spring/summer) and by assloads of drunken wastoids at night. Its accessible to transit via an EL stop located on the same block and is a block-and-a-half away from a major bus hub. Even if you want to come by car, the place is right near I-95 and there are plenty of parking garages nearby. Did I mention that this neighborhood also explodes with foot traffic on the first Friday night of EVERY month!?!?
        This is a 9,000 square foot (read: HUGE) space that can hold 200 people. There's a private event space and a gigantic fucking kitchen that still has 80% of its shit still there. The Market Street exposure of the place is 75 feet wide and goes hundreds of feet back on Bank Street. The leasing is being managed by M.S. Fox Real Estate Group. Here's the listing, which also indicates that the space could be used as a "first floor loft style technology space" as well. It goes for $23/sq ft NNN, so $207,000/yr plus the Triple Net.
         Go ahead and grab this bitch-bastard before the Spring influx of tourist traffic. Get over there and FILL THIS FRONT!