How a porn-turned-taco shop helped build Scott's Addition

• The free event is from 1pm-midnight with live music, food and drink specials, and general Halloween-themed revelry.

Why it matters: The restaurant sits at the gateway to what is today the city's most popular entertainment district, but the rise of Scott's Addition may not have been possible without the porn shop conversion.

State of play: Today, more than 7,000 Richmonders live in Scott's Addition; developers have pumped hundreds of millions of dollars into luxury apartments; and it's home to dozens of restaurants, breweries, entertainment venues, fitness studios, boutiques, an upscale bowling alley and a grocery store.

Yes, but: None of that existed in 2011, the year local developer Charlie Diradour came across the "for sale" sign posted on the Triangle Book Store building at 1001 N. Arthur Ashe Blvd.

• The building that for more than 40 years boldly advertised its selection to anyone driving by: Adult books, novelties; 50-cent movies (they'd gone up).

That bookstore — or more accurately, the lack of it — was critical to any future development on the Boulevard, and Diradour had been dying to get his hands on the building for years, he tells Axios.

And the Boulevard was the only thing Diradour was focused on. Scott's Addition was still an industrial district that most locals had no reason to visit, much less learn or use its name.

• A short-lived ice bar had come and gone in 2008. Lunch and Supper wouldn't open until 2012 and 2013; Fat Dragon, not until the end of 2012.
• But the Boulevard had Movieland since 2009, Buz & Ned's since the 90s, and in 2011, a year-old minor league baseball team Richmond was actually excited about.

The bank foreclosed on the porn store building in February 2011; Diradour bought it in September for $225,000, according to city records.

Where Diradour had a vision for the Boulevard, local restaurateurs Patrick Stamper and Randy O'Dell had a dream — plus a sense of humor (they named it En Su Boca, Spanish for "in your mouth") and elbow grease to spare.

• The duo was fresh off two successful restaurants, the (now-closed) Mezzanine and Bellytimber Tavern (now Beauvine Burger Concept), and looking for a spot to open a taco shop.

They had no idea what they were getting into until they walked in the door, Stamper tells Axios.

• There was a backroom where the video viewing happened in semi-private stalls, 15 in all, mini-movie booths with no doors, and walls nobody wanted to touch.
• There were the former Triangle regulars who stopped by almost daily. One day a guy walked down from the bus station, saying it was always his first stop when he got out of prison. The next day, a well-dressed grandfather-type in a luxury car stopped in — and hurried back to his car and sped off when he saw the store was gone.

"It was something out of Times Square in 1970," but in Richmond, a decade into the new millennium, Stamper says.

They took the building down to the studs and poured a whole new concrete floor. They ripped off the vinyl siding, only to find the store once had a bolder, painted-on ad display — and the building the shell of its original use, a Texaco station complete with garage doors.

The renovation took two years in all, longer than anyone thought, but enough time to make sure the past was scrubbed clean.

• But none of them, Diradour and Stamper say, could have anticipated the neighborhood that grew up around them ("I would've bought a hell of a lot more buildings," Diradour says).
• They're just happy to have been a part of it. And they're celebrating all weekend.

Worth noting: En Su Boca actually opened in July 2013, despite its October anniversary party and "established in 2012" banner on its website.

• But this is Richmond, a city where anniversaries can be celebrated whenever one wants, where a couple of guys with a vision (and historic tax credits) — and a former porn shop — can help build a whole new neighborhood.
• It doesn't get much more Richmond Real than that.