This Is Framingham

According to a MWDN article the Italian restaurant Papa Razzi will be taking over ye olde Bennigan’s location (thank you!)

From the article:
“Work on gutting Bennigan’s will start within the next five business days”
“The gutting is taking place because “pretty much everything in there is useless,” said Dalton (VP Back Bay Restaurant Group) ”It has a lot of age on it and it’s in poor condition. It’s better to strip everything out.” 
Amen.

I’ve been to the Papa Razzi Wellesley a few years ago and remember it being really good.  I think they’ll do very well here.  They’re going to spend $2.3 million on renovations. I’m glad someone with money is going to renovate the whole place.

The old (and ugly) building that was once Janitor’s Warehouse at the corner of Concord and Aberdeen (and Rt. 9) has finally been torn down.
You’d think there would be some permits issued for this but I looked up the address and nothing has been issued since 2005.  In fact, there are only three permits ever issued on the building at all (according to the permit and licence look-up onthe  town website) so maybe something is just off in the record keeping.

I have no idea what could be going on for this site, but I’m pretty sure whatever it is will be better than that boarded up old building.

Before:

After:

Driving by the old Ipanema the other day I noticed a sign saying a new Chinese restaurant called Red Pepper will be opening there.  As I’ve mentioned before I love Chinese food so I’m looking forward to another place to try. 
It’s kind of funny this place has gone from Irish tavern to Texan BBQ, to Brazilian and now Chinese. I think it was even a martini bar at one point too.  Anyway I’m looking forward to trying it whenever it opens. 

Major work being done on the old Border’s book store next to Ken’s.

Unfortunately, work permits do not yield much information except the owner is “Hanna Enterprises” and got permission to “weld/cut staircase” and a sign permit that states “WALL SIGN - SPRINT”.  I’m really hoping SPRINT means a type of sign or something because it would be such a waste to have a cell phone store take up that space.  I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.

I went by the site where Hurwitz’s kosher meat market used to be. It’s been repainted and looks like something is going on so I looked up to see if any work permits have been issued.
Although it is listed as 327, (that address is a residence so it must be a typo) they must mean 326 where Hurwitz’s used to be.  There is a recent permit issued for “Retail with food service” for a business called “Hot and Sweet Continental Deli and Meat Market”.
I’m glad something that I might want to use will move in there instead of an office or something.  I’m looking forward to checking this place when it’s open.

When I was a student at Framingham State this building was painted bright purple and called the “Psychedelic Emporium” (9 Main st.).  I never went in there (I really didn’t) but I know they sold bongs and other marijuana accessories- BUT, they had to call everything “tobacco” accessories.
I remember driving by with a classmate of mine who was a pot smoker and even he shook his head and said “that building must bring the property value down around here by thousands of dollars”. That’s a pretty strong statement for a non-homeowner-pot-smoking-college-student to say about this place.
I guess they got busted, someone must have asked for a bong and the person behind the counter didn’t say “we don’t have bongs, just “tobacco pipes” and instead said “oh sure, right this way, we have a great selection of bongs. What? What’d I say wrong?”.  I don’t know if that’s exactly how it went down but I heard it was something along that line.
I had to actually look up the permits for this address to remember the name of this place, for the life of me I couldn’t remember it.  I kept thinking it was something like “House of Bong” but of course I knew it couldn’t be that.  Anyway, I thought it was funny that the license type listed in the permit for this store was “JUNK - JUNK DEALER LICENSE”.
To the best of my knowledge this building hasn’t been used as anything since.  Maybe some stoners put a curse on the building but according to work permits looks like a couple of construction permits were filed last month so maybe something new will finally go in there.

I’d like to thank to Karen for pointing out the work being done on the building that was the old Rainbow Buffet, Super Buffet, Scioletti’s, Tony Roma’s etc.. I looked up the work permits and it looks like it will be another restaurant called “Asia Buffet”.  I’m glad something is hapening with this place.  I hope they really do some work on the exterior, this building has bothered me for a while.