The boarded-up building at 1000 Eastern Ave. still has a red Milan sign hanging on it and a fenced-off exterior littered with garbage, a visible reminder of more than a decade of vacancy on the edge of Little Italy. Now the 12,000-square-foot property, wedged between Little Italy and Harbor East, is finally headed to auction, with on-site bidding scheduled for August 20.
The listing comes from Alex Cooper Auctioneers, according to the Baltimore Sun, which reports that the property is owned by HSN, LLC, a Bethesda-based entity, per state records. Sean Shaprast is listed as the property owner, and interested bidders must be pre-qualified by the Casey Group by August 17 and put down a $50,000 deposit to participate, the Sun reports.
Before it became the shuttered eyesore it is today, the building had a long run as a neighborhood dining destination. From 1990 until 2006, it operated as Luigi Petti, an Italian-themed restaurant with an upstairs banquet hall, a basement bar and dining room, and an outdoor patio lined with palm trees, according to a historical account from the Washington Examiner. That paper's 2006 reporting also noted the site had already been through a failed sale once before: a winning bid from a November 2005 auction fell through, forcing the property into foreclosure before it finally sold in June 2006.
From Luigi Petti to Milan's Nightclub Troubles
Public real estate records reviewed by Compass show the property last sold in November 2006 for $900,000 following Luigi Petti's closure. It later reopened as Milan, a restaurant that, per a prior Baltimore Sun report, was permitted to operate under its zoning status strictly as a restaurant but instead ran as a nightclub, drawing complaints and turmoil that ultimately led to its closure in 2014 amid legal disputes over redevelopment.
Shaprast pitched a plan in September 2016 to replace Milan with a four- or six-story apartment complex containing dozens of units, the Sun reports. That timeline lines up with a separate proposal unveiled the following month, in October 2016, when Marren Architects floated a six-story, 24-unit building for the site, according to Baltimore Fishbowl. Neither version of that residential conversion ever broke ground, and the building has sat shuttered for more than a decade since.
The Lofts: A Bigger, Pre-Entitled Pitch This Time
The current auction listing markets the site as the future home of a mixed-use project called The Lofts. Marketing materials from MacKenzie Commercial Real Estate specify entitlement plans for a six-story building with 30 apartment units and 3,500 square feet of ground-floor retail space, a notable jump from the 24-unit proposal floated a decade earlier. Under Baltimore City's zoning code, the property carries a C-1 Neighborhood Business designation, which, according to a listing description on Redfin, permits mixed-use buildings, multi-unit housing, general retail, and restaurants meant to serve the immediate neighborhood corridor rather than uses like Milan's nightclub operation.
The site's location, straddling the boundary between historic Little Italy and the denser, newer development of Harbor East, places it at the center of a neighborhood in flux. Little Italy has seen its own share of change recently: in July, Hoodline reported that Angeli's Pizzeria left the city limits for its first expansion into Howard County, a sign of shifting strategy among the neighborhood's longtime dining brands.
Neighborhood Watching Closely on Safety and Blight
Community stakeholders in Little Italy have grown increasingly attentive to vacant and neglected properties in recent years. In January, a spree of trash container arson fires and vehicle vandalism incidents rattled the neighborhood before a suspect's arrest, underscoring how empty lots and shuttered buildings can become flashpoints for blight and crime. The following month, neighborhood leaders had already moved to bolster oversight, having established a centralized surveillance camera network at gateway intersections in February 2025 to monitor street activity and improve area security.
Other developers have continued eyeing the area for new hospitality investment even as the Milan site sat dormant. Earlier this year, a local restaurateur proposed a 68-room boutique hotel and membership bathhouse nearby in Little Italy, reflecting continued appetite for redevelopment along the corridor. Whether The Lofts proposal finally breaks the cycle of stalled plans at 1000 Eastern Ave. remains to be seen, but for now, the fenced, garbage-strewn lot with its faded Milan sign stands as the neighborhood's most visible unfinished business.
