Be of good cheer — IHOP is here

Newly opened Downtown Brooklyn pancake mecca can brighten this rainy day

October 2, 2015 By Lore Croghan Brooklyn Daily Eagle

Rain, Rain Go Away — or at least hold off long enough for us to run to the new IHOP on Livingston Street. Eagle photos by Lore Croghan

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How did we live without it?

Comfort food for a crummy-weather day.

It has returned to Livingston Street in Downtown Brooklyn. To hell with calorie-counting.

Pancake mecca IHOP’s new location is open — just when it’s most needed as a place for people to get out of the chilly autumn rain and get cheered up by flapjacks and syrup.

The address is 253 Livingston St. — cater-cornered from the pancake house’s original location at 276 Livingston St., which has been torn down to make way for a new 25-story residential building.

The carb-alicious franchise vacated the latter site in July 2014.

Its new venue is oh-so-convenient for you guilt-ridden eaters. It’s in the same building as a Planet Fitness. After a combo meal of crepes, fried eggs and sausage, you can finally make good on that long-delayed New Year’s resolution to join a gym.

The building belongs to the Chera family and its company Crown Acquisitions. Its upstairs floors are used as a Long Island University residence hall for graduate students.

Walk around to the side of the property that faces Fulton Mall — with an umbrella tightly in hand, of course — and you’ll find bling king Swarovski, clothing chain Express, furniture chain Raymour & Flanigan and a spanking-new Chase Bank branch.

Earlier this year, Forever 21, a youth-oriented fashion retailer, rented a 40,000-square-foot space.

Addresses on that side of the building are 486 to 496 Fulton St.

On the Livingston Street side of the building, the asking rent for storefronts was $115 per square foot when the space IHOP took was on the leasing market a couple years ago, the Brooklyn Eagle reported previously.

The property the pancake palace vacated is a construction site now where a handsome apartment building designed by Handel Architects will rise.

Big machines are digging in the dirt there — or at least they were when we peeked through a construction fence on Thursday afternoon when raindrops had mercifully ceased for a moment.

TF Cornerstone, a development firm headed by brothers Tom and Fred Elghanayan, got a construction permit this past July for the planned 714-unit apartment building, which will use 33 Bond St. as its address.

There will also be retail space in the new building. If we’re lucky, maybe additional crave-worthy eateries will be coming our way.