A Capitol Hill cornershop shuttered for more than a year kicked back into motion in recent weeks and neighbors noticed the activity. If nothing else, the return of CHS can help answer questions like this — what is going on at the old Benson’s Grocery?

With the Hill’s food and drink boom still apparently strong enough to sustain more business, owner Hun Lee tells CHS his plan to transform the old bodega at Bellevue and Pike into a Japanese restaurant is in motion and construction has begun.

The $500,000+ construction project will be wrapped up by next spring, Lee hopes. A name for the new restaurant is also still in the works.

When it reopens, the joint will share the block with classic leather bar The Eagle as well as Victrola’s Pike location. As for neighborhood groceries, the days of the mom and pop quick mart will never die though, on the Hill, they are occasionally transformed. On E Pike, we hear there still might be plenty of groceries to go around — eventually.