The former Volpe's Sports Bar on South Fifth Street in Emmaus is one step closer, and one step further, from becoming apartments. A special exception request to convert the shuttered sports pub into residential housing got continued at a borough hall hearing Wednesday, with zoning officials wanting more clarity before they'll sign off.
The Emmaus Zoning Hearing Board recommended that applicant Francis Volpe continue the hearing to obtain and clarify information, according to WFMZ.com, and Volpe agreed to the delay. Volpe's Real Estate Holdings is seeking change-of-use zoning relief to convert the property at 52-54 S. Fifth St., in the borough's downtown neighborhood district, into residential apartments. The building, constructed in 1904, already houses eight apartments and more than 5,000 square feet of former restaurant space.
Parking Dimensions And Missing Paperwork Stall The Bid
The proposal calls for five additional apartment units, bringing the total to 13; the existing eight comprise six one-bedroom and two two-bedroom layouts. But the plan would fall short of the borough's parking requirement under its own formula, the outlet's report notes, and the hearing raised questions about whether on-site parking actually meets the borough's code dimension requirements. Compounding the issue, Volpe had not submitted a professionally engineered site plan for board members to review.
Those gaps are what pushed the board to continue rather than rule on the request. Without an engineered site plan laying out exact measurements, zoners said they couldn't confirm whether the parking as proposed would comply with borough code.
A Longtime Bar's Quiet Exit
Volpe's Sports Bar closed for good in early April, shutting its doors after 18 years in business, as reported by mcall.com. Fran Volpe had opened the Emmaus location in late 2008, following an earlier version of the bar at 1926 W. Tilghman St. in Allentown. He told the newspaper the business relied heavily on alcohol sales, and that a big percentage of our business was alcohol.
Volpe said the bar business had declined over the last few years and that the business overall was not doing well, pointing to a broader shift in habits: people don't seem to drink or stay out as late as much as they used to, he said. He added that Emmaus has an opportunity for a good restaurant, suggesting any future tenant would likely need to be food-driven to succeed at the location. After six months on the market without a formal offer, Volpe said he'd consider several paths forward, including opening a different business there, bringing on a partner, renting to another operator, or selling the property outright.
How Other Lehigh Valley Bar Conversions Played Out
Emmaus isn't the first Lehigh Valley municipality to weigh turning a shuttered bar into apartments. In Bethlehem, the city's zoning board granted Jama Properties LLC a special exception back in March 2018 to convert a former private social club and bar on West Elizabeth Avenue into a four-unit apartment building, a project outlined by mcall.com. That approval was necessary because it changed one nonconforming use to another within an institutional zoning district, and the resulting four-unit building needed just seven parking spaces to comply with the city's zoning law.
A more recent example sits in Upper Nazareth Township, where construction is now underway on a three-story building at 373 East Lawn Road, the former site of the Ranch House Bar and Grill. That project, approved in 2024, calls for two commercial office spaces and seven one-bedroom apartments, and the site will include 32 on-site parking spaces once finished. The half-acre property sold for $645,000 in October 2025, per the same WFMZ report. Neither comparable project establishes what Emmaus's own parking rules will ultimately require for the Volpe's site, where the outcome still hinges on the engineered details zoners are waiting to see.
