It was dead for longer than it was alive, and when the vacant A&P that stood aching and idle for 40 years came tumbling down Monday morning, parents brought their kids to watch.

OK, there were donuts, too, but demolition was the big draw. Forty or 50 people, or maybe a tenth of the Allegheny West neighborhood, turned out.

"If this was New York City," said long-time resident Mike Coleman, "we'd have 800,000 people.''

This weedy, boarded-up rectangle at the corner of West North Avenue and Brighton Road had been so ugly for so long the locals taught themselves not to look at it. Once it was down and the rubble hauled away, its former owner, Bob Mistick, summed up the feeling of many when he said, "I love nothingness.''

The site's current owner, Andy Wolfinger, is intent on getting a little somethingness going nonetheless. Mr. Wolfinger bought the Beech Avenue building behind this lot in 2003 and is in the middle of converting it into six three-story lofts that start at $400,000.

He paid $280,000 for his building, and last month paid $120,000 for the A&P, which "closed so long ago it was just called the A,'' according to Mr. Coleman. Clearing it away opens the north side of the loft building, and he intends to open it up with large windows.

I stood with Mr. Wolfinger on the long third floor deck, with a southern view of the Golden Triangle and an eastern view of big Allegheny Commons Park and thought that this would be a great place to watch fireworks. Then I noticed a hammock with a small plastic medicine jar on it.

"Those are my antacid pills for when I start worrying about how I'm going to pay for everything,'' Mr. Wolfinger said. "The jar's empty and the hammock's unused.''

Indeed, the numbers he tosses drip with ambition. When I first bought a rowhouse in this North Side neighborhood 16 years ago, you could buy a home for less than six figures.

Standing with Mr. Wolfinger, though, overlooking the earth movers that were clearing the last bits of 1950s supermarket architecture away, he spoke of constructing three more five-story buildings, each with five stand-alone, single-floor units of 2,500 to 3,000 square feet. Asked how much that would cost, he said, "Probably five or six million [dollars] at least.''

I was reminded of the kid in a Dr. Seuss book, "If I Ran the Circus,'' wherein a boy looks out over a weedy vacant lot and can see with vivid clarity the grand Circus McGurkus. Having seen what Mr. Wolfinger has already done, I could envision his new buildings, too.

That a store could stand idle this close to the geographic center of Pittsburgh for four decades is pretty fair testimony to what has been the state of the American inner city. The Mistick brothers bought the property in 1995 with an eye on Allegheny General Hospital's ill-fated expansion ambitions, and now Bob Mistick says he's happy to sell.

Mr. Wolfinger, whose day job is first vice president for wealth management at CitiGroup Smith Barney, decided to do this after living in a loft Downtown. Once he moved across the river, he decided that the heating and cooling costs made subdividing the property more sensible. He walks or bikes to work and believes, as so many Downtown developers do, that the lifestyle will find its market.

"They could steal a bike a month and I'd still be ahead on parking costs.''

After we left his building, we toured the nearby Hipwell Manufacturing Co., which sprawls through five attached brick buildings across the alley from this site. Hipwell began making wicks for lamps in 1887, and made millions of flashlights until about a year ago. That's when "China won'' and drove yet another American manufacturer under with its cheap exports, company president George Parks said. Now he and others are trying to figure out how to make the numbers work for condominiums there.

Until America starts making things again, it won't be a bad idea for more people to walk or bike to work. That at least slashes oil imports. Knocking down eyesores can't hurt. Most people prefer their patriotism with a view.