Downtown property owner James Goodnight recently added another South Front Street building to his inventory of Wilmington investments.

Already the owner of 1 and 21 South Front streets, Goodnight bought 9 S. Front St. from Michael and Deborah Caliva in March.

"I’ve got a little bit of an assemblage going there with 1 and 21 [South Front St.] Having another piece in the middle kind of made sense ... It's a beautiful old building,” Goodnight said Wednesday of his latest purchase, which was built around 1899.

Michael Caliva paid $52,500 for the property in 1980, according to a previous Greater Wilmington Business Journal story, and the most recent deed says Goodnight’s limited liability company, Meetinghouse Properties, purchased it from the Calivas in a $1.84 million transaction on March 23.

At 21 S. Front St., Goodnight completed major renovations last year to create the headquarters for Next Glass, a growing startup founded in Wilmington that develops software related to the wine and beer industry. Goodnight, son of SAS founder Jim Goodnight, bought 1 S. Front St. for nearly $1.4 million in January 2015, according to the deed.

Nine S. Front St. was the home of Caffe Phoenix for 23 years. A new restaurant called Platypus & Gnome, expected to open this month, is currently leasing the first-floor restaurant space.

Michael Caliva said this week that he and his wife, who in addition to owning the building had also operated Caffe Phoenix, have other things they want to do now.

“It was kind of hard to let it go in a way, but on the other hand, now that we know the building’s in good hands, we don’t have that responsibility ... We look forward to seeing what James is going to do with it. He has a lot of good ideas and a good vision for the neighborhood,” Michael Caliva said.

Goodnight said 9 S. Front St. won’t require a major renovation, and his only immediate plans for the building involved the second floor, potentially removing a second-floor kitchen and evaluating the possibilities for its adaptive reuse, with office space being a possibility.  

Goodnight, along with Next Glass founder Kurt Taylor and others with interests in downtown Wilmington, have said they can see downtown becoming a hot spot for tech startups like Next Glass. Offices like those of Next Glass and other companies on Front Street boost the whole area, said Terry Espy, president of Downtown Business Alliance.

“For a healthy downtown, you’ve got to have people that are down there every day,” said Espy, who is also president of commercial real estate brokerage and development firm MoMentum Companies. “The downtown markets – that’s what keeps them viable.”

In addition to completing work on the first floor at 21 S. Front St., which will be office space, Goodnight said he is also preparing to renovate 222 Princess St., a smaller building he bought last year, for a retail user. He said he sees the street becoming "a nice little retail stretch," using men's clothing and accessory store Bloke, 216 Princess St., as an example of an existing business.