Big news: the scaffolding around 325 Greenwich has come down and the building looks great. Owner Josh Greenberg has been working on the building since he bought it in 2019, and the scaffold surrounding it has been up since at least 2021.

You can read more about the saga here and here, along with James’ enlightening comments, if you want to hear the painful details of his battle with the Department of Buildings. But things are looking up now, with the building restored to the original brick and four tenants now installed on the ground floor. Tribeca Barber Spa was the first to move in, then the maternity boutique Emilia George, then Chip City and finally, Café Clementine.

Greenberg bought the building from Tribeca landlord Peter Matera, and since then has been trying to bring it up to code. The building entered the legalization process under the Loft Law in 1983, and for the majority of those four decades, few substantial changes were made to the building since no one sought out a permit (there’s even a defunct elevator in there).

As we all can witness, he has been working on and restoring the façade (which is coming along) and making improvements to the storefronts. According to Greenberg, he paid $80k in fines from penalties from the prior owner, and he filed plans for legalization of the property, which set him back $55k in fees.

Once the scaffolding is down, the storefronts will be painted black, he said in his most recent update to me last month.