December 21, 2025, 6:03 am ET
A historic downtown Columbus office building may soon turn into apartments with a rooftop lounge.
Located at 161-167 N. High St., the Columbia Larrimer Building was built in 1890 and added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1983. The three-story, roughly 27,000-square-foot building is currently home to Elevator Brewery & Draught Haus, a craft bar and scratch-kitchen restaurant, plus two floors of office space.
Darin Ranker Architects & Associations, LLC has submitted plans to the city of Columbus to convert those top two floors into what would be known as Empire Apartments, five multi-bedroom units ranging from 990 to almost 1,500 square feet. Separate plans have previously been filed by the same Dublin architect firm and approved to replace the building’s existing rooftop equipment for a new lounge, with Vahza Lounge listed as the tenant.
Darin Ranker Architects did not return The Dispatch’s call for comment.
The rooftop plans were approved by the Downtown and Historic Resources commissions, while the Empire Apartments proposal remains in progress.
At a Dec. 18 hearing, the Historic Resources Commission said it wasn’t against the general conversion of offices into apartments, but wanted more information about some of the proposed changes to the building. The commission unanimously approved a motion to give the developer additional time to return with those details.
The Columbia Larrimer Building is currently owned by Empire Square LLC, which bought the property from developer Brad DeHays of Connect Real Estate in 2024 for $4.3 million, according to Franklin County Auditor records. Empire Square LLC is registered to Anna Krupovlyanskaya, also the registrant for “Lounge Vazha,” the LLC seemingly tied to the rooftop tenant despite being spelled differently.
As part of the apartment redevelopment, the developer needs to build a new fire escape staircase to meet building code requirements. The project description says the existing fire escape will be removed, and the new one will be installed on the building’s north side leading to North Wall Street.
The Columbia Larrimer Building has had a few different names and served a few different purposes over its history. First referred to as the Bott Building, aptly named after original owners and brothers Joseph and William Bott, the building originally housed Bott Brothers’ Billiards. In the 1920s, the space became the Clock Restaurant, which remained in business until the 1990s.
Reporter Emma Wozniak can be reached at ewozniak@dispatch.com or @emma_wozniak_ on X, formerly known as Twitter.
