A redevelopment surge that is sterilizing the quirk off Cheshire Bridge Road and threatening the strip's gay bars and businesses claimed another parcel – the longtime home of a popular Italian restaurant. 

Arrivederci, Alfredo's. Via Tomorrow's News Today:

Alfredo's Italian Restaurant, which has been in business since 1974, has been informed their lease is not being renewed and that their property has been sold.  The restaurant, located in a freestanding building at 1989 Cheshire Bridge Road, is one of Atlanta's longest running restaurants.  

Few details, or even the developer behind the closure, have surfaced. But Tomorrow's News Today hints that the property is being pieced together with its neighbors to make way for a mixed-use development with apartments.

A Georgia Department of Transportation Metro Atlanta Maintenance facility, located just north of Alfredo's, was also sold and will be joined with the adjacent parcels for the redevelopment. The overall parcel size is about 10 acres. 

Alfredo's hopes to relocate but in the meantime is warning customers to make use of those gift cards by the end of February.

The restaurant getting razed is another step in the remaking of Cheshire Bridge. The city tried amid controversy in 2013 and failed. Now, bulldozers and developers are accomplishing what the city couldn't.

The Alfredo's parcel is across Cheshire Bridge from a planned thrift store from AIDS Healthcare Foundation, the controversial agency that “joined forces” with AIDS Atlanta earlier this year. The facility takes over a vacant building two doors down from the gay-owned Las Margaritas and a few blocks from the Lost N Found Youth Thrift Store on Chantilly Drive. 

Another project further south on the strip is putting pressure on a triangle of gay clubs. The owners of a 2.4-acre parcel at the corner of Cheshire Bridge and Faulkner roads want to build 200 apartments on the site.  

The development would fill the property that sits in the middle of a triangle of gay nightlife staples – Jungle, Heretic and BJ Roosters. Plans call for a parking deck at the rear of the property and directly in front of the dance club, as well as a leasing office along Faulkner where gay party-goers park and apartments to face Cheshire Bridge across from Heretic and BJ Roosters. 

A four-acre lot on Cheshire Bridge, closer to its intersection with I-85, is being razed to make way for a $48 million, five-story apartment building. On the top end of the strip, at Cheshire's intersection with Piedmont Avenue, is the remaking of the Rock Springs strip center into upscale shopping with residential units.

And in between, a gay doctor refurbished a long-vacant building, the Cheshire Motor Inn sorta cleaned itself up, and speculation persists about the future of the gay and gray popular Colonnade. Tokyo Valentino – the former Inserection, which was once the focus of the sterilization efforts – thumbed its nose at critics, renovated and rebranded.

Amidst the redevelopment proposals, some Cheshire businesses catering to gays who eat and cocktail face bankruptcy and other financial troubles.

[photo via]