Report: Shakespeare’s Pizza location in Columbia to be demolished

The Columbia Daily Tribune has a story today of interest to Mizzou grads and fans of the best pizza in the state of Missouri: The building housing Shakespeare’s Pizza — hallowed ground in downtown Columbia since 1973 — is set to be demolished next month.

WUT NO WUT WHY?

According to the Tribune:

Shakespeare’s downtown location at 225 S. Ninth St. will move around the corner in late May in preparation for the building’s demolition to make way for a multistory structure with Shakespeare’s as the ground-floor tenant.

[Shakespeare’s manager Kurt] Mirtsching said when Shakespeare’s opens in the ground floor of the new building, the restaurant will retain the same floor plan, look and feel of the original location. 

“We’ve taken 360 digital photos of the place,” Mirtsching said. “Basically, we’re doing everything we can possibly do just shy of numbering the bricks and taking them apart piece by piece.”

The news is apparently not an April Fools joke. 

The new building that will be home to Shakespeare’s is being constructed “through a partnership with the Odle brothers and the Rader family, who jointly own the property,” according to the report. The Odle brothers have been involved in erecting some of the student-housing complexes that have rapidly and dramatically transformed the landscape of downtown Columbia in recent years. There is some concern that this development has crossed over into overdevelopment. 

The new Shakespeare’s is expected to operate around the corner, in the former Los Bandidos space, for over a year, from this May until late summer 2016, according to the Tribune.