The clock is ticking on the timepiece atop 102 Morris St.

Architect Scott Harmon announced this week that developers have closed on the historic corner property in downtown’s Five Points, which Harmon’s Center Studio Architecture and its partners bought from the city.

The clock, added in the 1980s, “is not long for this world,” Harmon said Wednesday. “I expect it to be gone in a week.”

A Dumpster outside is the only clue to the renovation that awaits. When completed in about six months, the project will have turned the two buildings on the site into four ground-level storefronts and three condominiums on the second floor.

The work will relabel the two-story building:
- 101 E. Chapel Hill St. It will house All City Pizza, Bullseye Bicycle and The Cupcake Bar on the first floor and the condominiums, two of them rental, upstairs.
- 107 E. Chapel Hill St. Harmon and partner David Arneson’s Center Studio Architecture will take the single-story building, occupying half and leasing half until and if they expand.

“It’s going to be neat,” said Bob Ashley, executive director of Preservation Durham.

The owners of The Cupcake Bar, a delivery cupcake business based in Cary, are aiming to open a retail space in the Five Points area in downtown Durham.

Sisters Katie Braam and Anna Branly (pictured left in staff photo by Shawn Rocco) have been running their cocktail-inspired cupcake business since 2008. Branly says they hope to close on a 1,100-square-foot space at 102 Morris Street in September and then begin construction.

"I'm very excited to be in Durham because we live here," said Branly Monday afternoon.

In the meantime, they will continue to work out a rented kitchen in Cary to offer delivery and make cupcakes for three retail locations: Tin Roof Teas in Cameron Village, Coffee & Crepes at Cary Crossroads and now Old Havana Sandwich Shop in Durham. Brany said they hope to continue offering delivery and their products at those retail locations even after they open their shop.

[Go HERE to read a blog post I wrote about All City Pizza, which will open in the same building next year.]

Gray Brooks, who graduated from Durham's Jordan High School and UNC-Chapel Hill, is returning home to Durham to open All City Pizza, hopefully by early next summer. (Go HERE to see an image of the building in Durham's Five Points area and details on the sale.) Brooks' presently works as the chef at Seattle's Serious Pie, one of a dozen restaurants owned by restaurateur Tom Douglas. 

Brooks, 43, answered a few questions via email and so I thought I'd share his answers.

About the location (102 Morris St.): "One of my favorite things about our location is that we're right across the street from Whiskey, a fantastic bar that resides in a space in which my grandfather Peter Ligets used to own a restaurant called ABC Lunch. [This is] sort of a full-circle, homecmming thing. I actually wanted to call the restaurant ABC Pizza, but there is apparently a 40-something year-old pizzeria in Florida that owns the rights to that name." 

About the concept: "Super simple. Wood-fired pizza. Our menu is going to be divided into four sections: antipasti, shared appetizers, salads and pizzas. The pies will be around 13 inches, enough for one person or split between two, if you're not real hungry, or if you share a couple of appetizers. We'll get everything that we can from local farmers; some of the stuff, like some of the cheese we'll use, will come from Italy. The soul of our place is our crust.  It's a three day process; we use a slow fermentation in order to get a fully developed dough...It results in a crust that's really flavorful and chewy with a nice crunch to offset the chewiness, like really good bread."

About his restaurant career: "I've worked for Tom [Douglas] for the past 11 years.  Before that, i was part of the staffs at two other Seattle restaurants:  Brasa (since closed, I'm sad to say, but had a good 10-year run, then fell victim to the financial crisis), and Cyclops (cool little indie cafe that I helped open).  I worked at a bunch of different restaurants on Martha's Vineyard, the best of which was a place in Edgartown called Chesca's....During the school year, I worked at Crook's Corner, mostly as a busser, but occasionally in the kitchen ...and at Pepper's Pizza in Chapel Hill and later running a second restaurant they opened out on Ocracoke."