This corner has seen the largest amount of change within the past four years. Â And there is potential for that to continue, with a proposal for the first major mixed-use project along College Avenue to be built since the days of the streetcar.
Northeast:
This recently renovated building which used to house Steck Plumbing is now the home of Sinking Ship bar. This would have been a very dangerous thing for yours truly if it happened a decade ago when I was living next door.
The corner is also home to Recess, one of the top restaurants in town, and my personal favorite.
Northwest:
Hopefully, this corner will one day be the future location of the Uptown. Two of the corner buildings have been demolished, leaving behind only a pay phone box, which is sort of surreal. We’ll have more on the latest developments of the Uptown at a later post, but positive momentum seems to be building behind the project.
Southwest:
This nice old 2-story is now the home of Upland’s tasting room, Paw Patch, and KTF bicycle accessories.
Southeast:
I neglected to take a photo of the recently-closed Just Wing’N It, which was in a former Kentucky Fried Chicken location. Fortunately, Mary Owens sent me one that I could use. One can only hope that the owners of this place would think about selling it in order to replace this building with something more appropriate for the location.
I really wish the Just Wing’n it people would remove the giant broken down sign on the corner. Otherwise, if something neat gets put on the Northwest corner, this will really shape up to be a nice area, especially considering it gets pretty close to some sketchy neighborhood.
Nice to see potential here. I have not personally ventured to these new restaurants and shops. I will try and head over there as soon as possible. Would like to see the uptown you talk about in the coming years.
I think Just Wing’n It is closed, based on observations during my recent work commutes.
Same. I’d be very surprised if it was still operational.
Thanks, I have updated the article. It looked closed to me, but I wasn’t sure about it.
I’m surprised no one has yet to decry the suburban strip mall look of The Sinking Ship and Recess.
In general, I support reusing older buildings. They are not great buildings that I would like to see constructed today, but they are not set back too far from the street, and they don’t seem to be built with cheap materials. I do think it was a bit of a shame that they tore down a house to expand their parking lot, though.
The former KFC is another matter entirely.
I actually like the fact a house was used for expanded parking. The constant argument made against the success of MK’s commercial nodes is that it makes it difficult for surrounding residents to find on-street parking. The only way residential to parking lot changes ever works is if the residentiall isn’t worth very much, so it’s never going to become a common shift in MK. It seems to provide a bit of a buffer between the commercial and the residential, and I’d like to see both prosper.
Love the whole College av I grew up @ 26th n College from 1958 thru 1975.I still travel College a lot. n i love to see some of the older bldg. being reused.I just found the site. n enjoy what i’ve so far.n also to find out the history of some of the bldg.grew up as a kid i was in a lot of them. My grandmother work in the area for years