More COVID casualties: Proposed high-end Lexington bar, longtime downtown deli
A high-profile bar and venue scheduled to be coming to downtown Lexington this year has been canceled.
The 20|20 Rooftop project was supposed to add a new rooftop bar to the historic building at 161 North Limestone as part of major renovations.
The renovations are still happening but the skyline addition isn’t.
“We have canceled the 20|20 Rooftop project due to the new economic outlook caused by COVID-19. Opening a new high-end concept such as this doesn’t appear to be wise in the immediate future,” said Aimee Lanza, who bought the property with her husband, Javier, last year. She said they plan on completing renovations of the rest of the building, with office space on the second and third floors and retail on the first.
Much of the building has already been leased, she said.
“We plan to revisit the 20|20 Rooftop concept in the future once the economic landscape is more stable,” Aimee Lanza said in an email.
The Lanzas had planned to add a fourth-floor glass-walled rooftop bar to the building at the corner of Limestone and Church Street, just off the city’s hot downtown dining district. The project would have been a bar as well as an event space, with wide-open views of Lexington, opening in the first half of 2020.
Instead they will focus on their other two bars, Centro and The Garage, for now.
George’s Deli closes
The COVID-19 pandemic shutdown also accelerated the loss of a longtime downtown lunch fixture: George’s Grocery and Deli, which was on the first floor.
Owner George Farhat said that he had been planning to close his store and full-service deli in August or September after more than 34 years serving everyone from federal judges to office workers and people from the neighborhood , including generations of students from Sayre across North Limestone.
But after food service was closed for everything except takeout at the end of March, he decided to shut down completely for a month to see where things stood.
“It wasn’t any better,” he said. “It wasn’t worth coming back to kick start it again. I got out five months earlier than I wanted to, basically.”
He and his wife, Krystal, who also worked in the store and 48-seat deli at times, opened in 1986.
“The only thing I miss, didn’t get a chance to say good bye to a lot of my patrons,” George Farhat said. “But once this pandemic is behind us, maybe we’ll get to have a reunion … we were planning a party before we retired. But this pandemic changed the whole dynamic.”
This story was originally published May 27, 2020 at 4:19 PM.
