Could this be the future of Lower Greenville?

We're a few days behind on posting this story, but the local blogs are buzzing about Madison Partners (fka Dunhill Properties) plans to build an environmentally-certified mixed-use office complex on the Arcadia site (click on the photo to see the screen-saver size image).

How does a 20,000 square foot, multi-story retail, bar and and restaurant building on lowest Greenville sound? The site, which is being developed by UCR, is where the Arcadia Theater stood before it burned a few years ago.

According to documents issued by UCR Realty, the new building will be a 20,000 square foot, two-story structure - retail, bar and restaurant on the lower level, and office facilities on the top level.

This is not the same development proposed more than a year ago (sadly, we cannot find the original DMN story) which would have included 60 residential units and a parking lot. But the luddites in faux-LGWNA grabbed Dunhill by the cornerstone and said no way to residential development on Lower Greenville (just like they killed the original CityVille development and the recent Carnival proposal).

The structure is legal under current Community Retail zoning requirements, and we can probably look forward to a major upgrade of the surface parking lots behind the building.

Since the building will be LEED certified, you know up front that there no smoking will be permitted within the structure. So the proposed restaurants and bars will not be the scummy kind of places you find in great numbers all over Lower Greenville today. And at $40 per square foot to lease, the proposed 5,740 sf restaurant on the north end of the property will probably have a dress code that most of the current gangbangers visiting the area every weekend can only dream about meeting.