NEW ORLEANS — The historic Circle Food Store on the corner of St. Bernard Avenue and Claiborne has a new owner.
New Orleans based Torres and a business partner are now the proud owners of the longtime grocery store which opened up in 1938.
"Yes we paid $200,000 more than what we were originally trying to buy it for," Sidney Torres said.
Don't feel bad for the real estate mogul, he just walked away with the steal of a lifetime.
"But at a $1.7 million for almost a city block I mean it's a great deal," Torres added.
Following Katrina, the grocer was wiped out. Through help from the city, it opened back up in 2014. But it struggled and sadly closed its doors last November.
"It wasn't about the money, but you have to make money to stay in business," Dwayne Boudreaux Jr. told Eyewitness News in November 2018.
One of Torres' boilerplate ideas is to transform the building into a kind of food hall focused on fresh food; potentially vendors would pay with a percentage of profits, rather than rent space upfront.
"And so they can come in there with very little money and kind of get started in their business and selling vegetables or whether they want to do -- a deli," Torres explained.
But before he sinks in money for renovations he says he has to work with the New Orleans Mayor's Office to make sure it doesn't flood like it did in August of 2017.
"When the floods happened under Mitch Landrieu's administration I went there with a group of engineers, not knowing we were going to buy it," Torres said.
That time Torres made his own inspections near the store and found caked in storm drains and some that appeared to be obstructed by asphalt.
"To build that store would be 6-7 million dollars," he said.
And while he's been known for flipping properties, this time he says he wants to hold on to it.
"I like finding iconic locations and really buying them and bringing them back to how they were," Torres said.
Torres does not have a date for when the building would re-open, but he hopes it will be by the end of the year. In addition, he hopes to hang on to the name, but is still working to make sure he can.