A New Best Friend?

I wrote recently about two new pet supply places that have opened up recently (Pet Food Express and Best in Show) but a much older pet supply shop closed many months ago at the corner of 18th Street and Douglass.

My Best Friend was an old-fashioned neighborhood store in that the owners were pretty much always there, often standing in the doorway, greeting neighbors as they walked by.  We don't have pets, so I never was a patron of the store, but there was a nice vibe about the place.

Earlier this year, that vibe went bizarre.  The store announced the shut-down and cleared out its merchandise.  However, instead of clearing out and covering the windows with butcher paper (the normal routine in these situations) the store suddenly filled up with the furnishings of an ersatz living space -- bookshelves filled with books and CDs, armchairs in front of a tv, posters on the walls and in the windows.  We thought maybe this was going to become yet another "antique" store selling garage-sale cast-offs year-round, but then the windows were covered with bedsheets and it became obvious that someone was living in the store space!  (I know!)

That situation continued for a while, and then eventually an eviction notice was posted on the glass doors.  The storefront emptied out soon afterwards and the door was chained shut.  Soon after the realty signs went up.  The entire building (including two empty apartments upstairs) is/was for sale.

A neighbor eventually filled us in on the backstory for this building.  The owners of My Best Friend lived upstairs, and when the owners decided to sell the building things apparently got pretty ugly.  When the MBF guys were evicted from the apartment where they were living they moved down into the retail space until they were forced out of that space as well.

The apartments upstairs are fairly large, but badly in need of remodeling.  The retail space is also pretty deep, as you can see in the photo above.  The building features parking in back as well.

A couple of weeks ago we noticed that the realty sign was down, and there was activity in the store space:

False alarm?

Could it be a new tenant was moving in?  Refrigerators and a stove?  Is it a restaurant?  A health food store?  We were psyched to see this space finally getting a new business.

Unfortunately upon closer inspection those aren't commercial-grade appliances, and the most likely explanation is that the space is being used as a staging area for the badly needed remodels of the upstairs units.  But the good news is that this probably means that the building was sold and the new owner is investing money in keeping up the property.