Carroll Gardens' Vermont Farmacy Gets Construction Intervention

The long-aborning new life of the once-mysterious Carroll Gardens business called the Vermont Market & Pharmacy may be rushing toward a suddenly fast-approaching finish line.

For a year or so, the new lease-holders of this one-time old school pharmacy—and more recent bizarre country market, and even more recently a shuttered, dusty mystery—have been trying to transform the space into an old-timey, Green, locavore, soda fountain. (It's hard to explain.) Progress has been glacial. But since Thursday, there's been all sorts of hectic activity surrounding the address. Trailers, food purveyors, cameras, etc.

A movie shoot, I thought. But no. The business has been selected as the subject of Discovery Channel's "Construction Intervention," one of those reality television shows where they turn around a falling-apart business or home in the space of a week. I saw workers taking out all the priceless cabinet work yesterday, and today they were filming staged interviews with planners and designers, and going to work on the facade.

I'd love to see this new business finally open. I hope this will be the upshot of this TV coup.