Last week, painters at the corner of Cross and Hanover started covering the new building's dark gray exterior with a warmer brown. Builders are putting up striped awnings over the windows and marble wainscoting at street level. Frank DePasquale told the Boston Globe that the color change was always part of the plan. The timing still looks like an answer to a lot of people. A food account's video, titled "Why the North End's new entrance is so ugly," has passed 10,000 likes.
The Cross Street block is one of three North End properties that sat dark for years, one of them for decades, and all three have moved within the past two years. Cross Street went under construction in 2025, 97 Salem St. won zoning approval in July, and Commercial Wharf got a new filing this month. A fourth project, the North End Historical Museum on Prince Street, opened in July. For a long time the question on these sites was whether anything would ever happen there. In the most recent arguments, the focus has been on how the new buildings should look and how big they should be.
Four corners, four clocks
| Site | Background | Where it stands, October 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| 60-80 Cross St. at Hanover | Years of vacancy after Bread & Butter closed in 2015 | Under construction. No opening date given |
| 3 Prince St. | New museum location | Open since July 21, 2026 |
| 97 Salem St. | About 26 years, per its owners | Zoning approval July 28, 2026 |
| 88-91 Commercial Wharf | Fire on May 4, 2011 | Letter of intent filed Oct. 1, 2026 |
Why Cross Street stayed empty so long
The Globe calls this stretch of Cross Street the unofficial gateway to the North End. When the Central Artery came down, Big Dig backers said keeping local businesses on Cross Street was "crucial" to the neighborhood's character. Over the years the block held a liquor store, a juice bar and a nail salon. Bread & Butter, a bakery-cafe, closed in 2015. A proposed Starbucks stalled in 2018 after strong community opposition, and then the property sat empty. A boutique hotel was planned next door and never got built either.
DePasquale announced in May 2025 that he had bought the block, the former Martignetti Liquors site. He told Boston.com that "there's a lot of things missing in the North End." The anchor tenant is La Scuola, a culinary school run with Dolce & Salato, a culinary school in Maddaloni, Italy. Boston.com reported that the plan also includes a Neapolitan cafe, a jewelry store, a women's handbag and shoe store, a baby shoe store and a travel agency. The Globe's October tour also showed the unfinished interior of DePasquale's Pastry.
The city approved his plan, revised after community feedback, in 2024, and construction started last year. The block was first expected to open in summer 2026, and Meet Boston's August update listed it for the third quarter. Both of those windows have passed. The Globe's Oct. 9 report didn't give a new date, so for now the honest answer to "when does it open" is that nobody has said publicly.
The fight over the facade
The criticism is about the matte stucco and metal siding. One critic quoted in the Globe called it "very modern, strip mall-esque." The Globe also found residents who like it. One longtime resident said copying the neighborhood's brick "would just look artificial" and called the new direction "really great." Tom Damigella, president of the North End Historical Society, told the paper anything would be better than the old "eyesore."
DePasquale's answer, as quoted in the Globe:
"They look at it and they see an empty building. That's like you're putting a T-shirt on, and you still haven't put on your suit and tie."
He says the finished building will include falling vines, flower boxes, a repaired Freedom Trail sidewalk and patio seating. Renderings show something that blends in more with the street than the current shell does. He told the Globe he held them back because he didn't want to "show the whole world what I'm doing before I do it." Lucy Maulsby, an architecture and urbanism historian at Northeastern University, told the Globe that this kind of tension is "almost always present when you insert something new into the historical fabric."
There's a history behind this. In 2018, people argued over whether a national chain should take the corner. Now they're arguing over paint, siding and signs on a building that will hold DePasquale's culinary school, cafe and shops.
Three blocks away, the museum that already opened
DePasquale is also paying for the North End Historical Society's new museum. That project is finished. The North End Historical Museum at 3 Prince Street opened to the public on Tuesday, July 21, 2026, according to the North End Regional Review. Its seven immersive installations cover 400 years of the neighborhood, with interactive timelines and maps, stories from immigrants and residents, photographs, oral histories and artifacts.
The Regional Review's opening story listed Saturday hours ending at 5 p.m. The society's current visit page now lists:
- Monday: closed
- Tuesday through Friday: 10:30 a.m. to 5 p.m.
- Saturday: 10:30 a.m. to 7 p.m.
- Sunday: 10:30 a.m. to 5 p.m.
The Saturday evening hours are the useful part for anyone who works weekdays. If you're walking down from Cross Street wondering what the North End's "character" means, the museum's installations show four centuries of it.
Salem Street: 26 years of plans, one approval
At 97 Salem St., next to Antico Forno, a one-story commercial building has been mostly unused for decades. Owners Peter Alfe and Robert Regnetta once ran Biscotti's bakery there. They told the Zoning Board of Appeal that the Big Dig forced them to close it. Over the years they proposed everything from an 18-unit residential building to a boutique hotel. In 2020 the board voted 4-3 in favor of a four-unit plan, but it still failed, because state law requires at least five votes.
On July 28, 2026, the board approved five stories of condos above the commercial space, with five units including two triplexes with roof decks. The owners also plan to reopen the bakery. Universal Hub quoted Alfe: "We are the only people in the North End that for 26 years have been trying to put up a building."
The neighborhood's two civic groups took opposite sides. The North End Waterfront Residents Association opposed it. NEWRA's David Kubiak told the board the group isn't against redeveloping the building but considered this proposal "unjustifiably and unreasonably too large" for narrow, historic Salem Street. The North End/Waterfront Neighborhood Council supported the plan. Like Cross Street, the disagreement was over the size and shape of the building. Neither group wanted the empty storefront to stay.
Commercial Wharf: the newest filing on the oldest ruin
The Commercial Wharf building has been a ruin the longest. Around 5 a.m. on May 4, 2011, a carelessly discarded cigarette started a three-alarm fire that destroyed what was then the Sarrouf Law Firm's building. Universal Hub reported on the incident. What's left is a two-story shell from the 1950s.
Cambridge developer Urban Spaces bought the property for $4 million in March 2025. Its letter of intent describes:
- A four-story boutique hotel with 35 to 45 rooms and a restaurant
- Half the parcel kept as open space
- A public Harborwalk walkway along the water side
- No parking on the wharf for guests
The city's project page for 88-91 Commercial Wharf lists the letter of intent on Oct. 1, 2026. It doesn't list any public meetings or comment deadlines yet. That page is where those dates will be posted. Based on the last two years, the review is likely to focus on the same questions Cross Street and Salem Street faced: the building's height, how it looks, and how much of the waterfront stays open to the public.
What's further out
Two civic projects are on longer schedules. The city says a new BCYF North End Community Center will be built next to Mirabella Pool at 471 Commercial Street to replace the Nazzaro Community Center, with completion expected in summer 2028. The city's project page doesn't say what will happen to the current Nazzaro building on North Bennet Street. The Webster Avenue Playground and Paul Revere Mall improvements are still in planning. That project includes accessible paths, new brick and bluestone paving and protection of existing trees, with completion expected in 2029.
Of the four sites in the table, the Prince Street museum is the only one you can walk into today. Cross Street has no announced opening date, Salem Street has its approval, and Commercial Wharf is still waiting for its first public meeting.
Our team keeps track of North End buildings one address at a time, including approvals, filings and which storefronts are about to change. If you live near Cross, Salem or Commercial Wharf and want to know how these projects could affect your block or your building, Downtown Boston Realty is happy to talk it through. Connect with our Downtown Boston team.
This article is general information, not legal, tax or financial advice. Consult a qualified professional about your situation.
