Frager’s Hardware announced Friday afternoon it found a partner to rebuild at its original Capitol Hill location.
The original building at Pennsylvania Avenue and 11th Street in Southeast, where the store opened in 1920, was destroyed by a four-alarm fire the evening of June 5, 2013. Frager’s has continued doing business from three temporary locations.
"It very much is a Capitol Hill institution," one woman said. "I'm excited it'll all be back in the same spot and open again."
Now real estate company Roadside Development will buy the location so Frager’s can return on a long-term lease.
“Over the past year, we studied the site extensively, removed environmentally sensitive materials, conducted several structural analyses, and evaluated the costs to rebuild the site,” Frager’s owner John Weintraub said. “We learned that the fire damaged the site so severely that, even with insurance proceeds, we could not afford to rebuild the site alone.”
They plan to keep the existing facades on Pennsylvania and 11th.
Weintraub sold the site to Roadside Development LLC, which will return the company to its original location as part of a mixed-use development. Renovations are set to begin soon.
