Plans to add a two-story addition to Fred’s in Tigerland were greenlighted Tuesday after the bar was granted a permit to begin construction on $2.7 million of work.
Roughly 200 feet of frontage will be renovated, according to the permit, and a new nearly 8,500 square-foot, two-story building will be built as an addition to the existing building on the property.
Longtime owner Marc Fraioli last year described the construction as an effort to upgrade the area and make it safer, and told the Planning Commission that, living nearby, he had a vested interest in reducing crime in the area.
“Tigerland has a bad name and, believe me, I’ve wished for years I could take my bar and move it to another location,” said Fraioli, who’d operated the bar for nearly four decades, at the time. “But I guess I am a victim of my own success out there.”
When completed, the “oldest college bar” in town will be nearly 12,000 square feet.
