Oct. 14, 2024

A decades-old restaurant building near The Empire Mall is coming down.

Demolition began today on the property at 4301 W. 41st St. It most recently was Old Chicago Pizza + Taproom, which closed in 2018.

The building has been available for lease since then with the idea that a new business would either renovate it or tear it down for a new development, said listing agent Ryan Ammann of NAI Sioux Falls.

“We just really got to a point where there was a deterioration of the building to the point where it just was better thought to take it down and start over,” he said.

The Fargo-based ownership group, Amin LP, is hoping to do a build-to-suit on the 2.2-acre property, he said.

The owner purchased the original building back when it was Chi-Chi’s Mexican Restaurante, which opened in 1983 and closed 20 years later.

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For Ammann, the deal is a bit personal — he had his first date with his future wife at the former Chi-Chi’s and estimates he still could identify the spot in the building where they sat.

Now that the site will be bare, though, marketing will restart on trying to find a new user.

“The plan is to start remarketing fresh,” he said. “We’ve been contacting people for that, but with the building there, there was some confusion as to whether it was that building, so they thought the project was bigger than a lot of people want to take on.”

Others were deterred by the road project in the area, but that’s now complete, and “people are confident and comfortable with what’s going on there for traffic patterns,” Ammann said.

“I think we anticipate being able to get something done there on a larger scale. It may be a strip (mall)-type of offering, or it could be a single tenant. That’s been primarily the thought was a long-term single tenant to utilize the property.”

Demolition should be done by the end of the week, he said.