The busy Italian Village stretch of N. 4th Street is having a moment, with new homes, shops and restaurants - and new highs in real-estate values.

For decades, 4th Street north of Downtown ran through a patchy stretch of empty lots, vacant warehouses and neglected residences — sights to quickly pass on the way out of the city.

Today, that stretch just may be the hottest hipster haven in town.

From Interstate 670 to 5th Avenue, the once-blighted Italian Village street is filled with $600,000 condominiums, breweries, coffee shops, apartments, fitness centers and restaurants, with many more on the way.

"I see this becoming another Third Street in German Village," said Joe Armeni, who has been buying, renovating and developing property in the area since the the 1980s. "I think it's going to happen within the next three years, that it fills in and really hits its stride."

While many other urban neighborhoods such as Olde Towne East, Parsons Avenue and Franklinton are enjoying the beginnings of a long-awaited resurgence, North 4th Street has been transformed in just a few years.

The stretch has benefited from the Short North building boom along High Street, which has pushed developers and tenants off High Street to less-expensive adjacent areas. Although developers struggle to get permission to tear down Short North or Victorian Village buildings, they have few such troubles along 4th Street, which has been dominated by vacant industrial or warehouse buildings.

The result is a mix of historic and new buildings that gives the neighborhood an edgy feel.

"Fourth seems to be a quirky version of High Street,” said Hans Maggard, general manager of Cosecha Cocina, a Mexican restaurant that opened in a former dairy barn on 4th Street in spring 2017.

The street's transformation kicked in five years ago, when the former Wonder Bread factory was converted into lofts, Seventh Son Brewing and Little Rock Bar opened and work resumed on the dormant Jeffrey Mining property, now called Jeffrey Park.

“It really kicked into high gear, and then it happened really, really fast,” said Seventh Son Brewing co-founder Collin Castore.

“I thought the amount of development that we're seeing would have taken 10 years, and it feels like it happened in two or three years."

Kevin Lykens, whose Wonder Bread renovation helped kick off the boom, has moved on to other projects that combine historic renovations and new buildings. He's turning the former Budd Dairy building into a food hall/restaurant incubator that will be run by restaurateur Cameron Mitchell. A stone's throw away, he's renovating the long-languishing Bethany Church into apartments, and he has proposed building an apartment development next door to that on 6th Street.

"I'm drawn to iconic buildings," Lykens said, adding that the "more modern, contemporary stuff mixed in with the historic" adds to the appeal of the 4th Street corridor.

Like fellow developer Armeni, who also started buying Italian Village property long before it was hip, Lykens prefers to buy and hold for the long term, leasing out space rather than selling it.

They and other developers say that the city's phasing out of the 15-year tax abatement in the western portion of the neighborhood — which will affect the west side of 4th but not the east side, which will remain tax-abated — is a major concern, as it's made the economics of developing an up-and-coming area work.

Pioneers such as Armeni and Lykens are now benefiting from an influx of dining spots along 4th Street, including Fox in the Snow Cafe, Hoof Hearted Brewery & Kitchen, Cosecha, Drunch Eatery + Bar, GoreMade Woodfired Pizza and City Tavern.

“This, to us, is the up-and-coming area," said Denisa Suta, co-owner of the boozy brunch destination Drunch, which opened last year.

Others are on the way. Woodhouse Vegan Pop-Up plans to open its first brick-and-mortar restaurant on 4th Street early next year.

“Italian Village is the gritty, new Short North,” said Cara Woodhouse, co-owner of Woodhouse.

While 4th Street has become a dining and drinking destination, it also has attracted hundreds of residents, many of them in Jeffrey Park, the 40-acre site on the east side of 4th Street that once was home to Jeffrey Mining Co. The mix of condos, apartments and retail space is close to being halfway built-out, said Mark Wagenbrenner, president of Wagenbrenner Development, which is developing Jeffrey Park.

Jeffrey Park is zoned for 120,000 square feet of office space, a 2-acre park and 1,500 residential units, 748 of which have been started or completed. That includes 542 completed apartments, with 88 more coming soon, plus 30 occupied townhomes, with 21 more in contract and 21 under construction or planned for the near future. Single-floor condo "flats" will come next, with 46 units planned.

The sprawling site was expected to be developed years ago, before the housing crash and resulting recession. The property was eventually acquired mostly by Wagenbrenner; one piece at the northeastern corner of 4th and Auden Avenue was acquired for high-end condos developed by Mulberry Design & Build. When the first sample unit debuted in 2016, the $650,000 price tag was eye-popping for the neighborhood.

Developer Chad Seiber, who sold his interest in Mulberry to his partner and has now formed a company called Midnight Blue, is still amazed at how quickly Italian Village has become a hotbed for high-end homes.

"I just finished a renovation on a 125-year-old house that was a $700,000 project," Seiber said. "As recently as 2015, things were hard to sell in the neighborhood. Now, property is getting expensive."

While Italian Village continues to draw young singles, Jeffrey Park's condominium buyers tend to be empty-nesters, Wagenbrenner said.

"With Harrison Park, probably 75 percent of our buyers prior to the recession were millennials," said Wagenbrenner, referring to his company's earlier project in Harrison West, just west of Victorian Village. "Now, it's getting close to a complete inversion. Many of our buyers now (in Italian Village) are empty-nesters."

The condominiums are also priced out of the range of most young buyers. Townhomes in Jeffrey Park, which are 2,500 to 3,000 square feet, average about $650,000, nearly three times the average sales price of Columbus-area homes.

While Jeffrey Park and Wonder Bread started the rebirth of the south end of the stretch of North 4th Street, the development has spread north to East 5th Avenue, almost a mile away.

DEV Real Estate just broke ground on Four x Five, a three-story development on East 5th and North 4th that will include 14 units — 11 townhouses and three flats, said Jay DeVore, CEO of DEV, a developer on the project. His co-developer is Brandon Foldes, the CEO of SHYFT Collective.

DeVore said the area owes a “huge debt of gratitude” to Seventh Son and Fox in the Snow.

“With these two anchors, it’s just led to incredible growth,” he said.

Fox in the Snow often has a long line on weekends for its gourmet pastries and coffee; it's been written up by media outlets across the country in travel and lifestyle stories about Columbus.

Jeff Excell and Lauren Culley, the owners of Fox in the Snow, originally wanted to be on nearby Summit Street but are happy with where they landed.

“I knew it was going to be a good spot,” Excell said. “I didn't know it was going to be this good a spot.”

mrose@dispatch.com

@MarlaMRose

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