Exhausting dramas such as "Ben Hur" and "Gone With the Wind" played at the Garden Theater in its mainstream days, but none could match that of the theater's own finale, a death throe that played out interminably and paralyzed investment around it.

Throughout the 1990s, one building after another on the Federal Street and North Avenue corridors of the Central Northside went dark, leaving as the last beacon the Garden Theater's marquee advertising a porn movie. Residents half-joked that they hoped to live long enough to see redevelopment.

Now, 23 years after the first effort to declare the corridor blighted for redevelopment, the wheels are starting to turn.

On Thursday, Nakama, a chain of Japanese restaurants, completed a lease agreement to open a second Pittsburgh location in the former Masonic Hall beside the Garden Theater, said Craig Totino, a principal of Collaborative Ventures, one of the developers. The other is on the South Side.

Mayor Luke Ravenstahl will hold a ceremony to celebrate the first lease at 11 a.m. Monday at the site.

It was almost five years ago that the city's Urban Redevelopment Authority bought the theater for $1.1 million and six years ago that the Supreme Court made its long-awaited decision that exonerated the URA for trying to seize it.

"I would think that by next summer [2013] people will be living in here," Mr. Totino said Thursday during a tour of the Masonic Hall, which has arched windows reminiscent of Moorish architecture overlooking Allegheny Commons Park from the third-floor ballroom. "That will be premier living space."