Opening a specialty grocery store and restaurant in the Brooks Landing area would address two pressing needs: filling the grocery gap left when the Mt. Hope Wegmans closed, and getting rid of the ugliest building in the neighborhood, a vacant house at 826 Genesee Street.

That's been the plan, anyway, for the last five years. But the banks are dragging their feet.

The owners of D and L Groceries, which specializes in Jamaican food, want to move from their current location at 1005 Genesee, demolish the house at 826 Genesee, and build a new building there.

The building at 1005 Genesee is just under 2,000 square feet. "His business volume is really constrained by the size of the building," says John DeMott, vice president of the Genesee Corridor Business Association and small-business program manager for the Sector 4 Community Development Corp. "He's doing the ethnic grocery stuff, plus the good old American bread, eggs, milk, beer all in this tiny store. And he's bursting at the seams."

D and L also ships nationwide and does catering.

"He's a destination business," DeMott says. "He especially forms relationships with the colleges over a wide area, because these colleges draw students from outside the US."

The new building would be approximately 7,000 square feet and house the grocery and a Jamaican-themed restaurant, says D and L co-owner Linford Hamilton. The neighborhood groups and city officials are pulling out all the stops to help Hamilton, DeMott says, but it's a tough go.

"When you go to the bank and tell them you want to build a restaurant, they get real quiet," he says. "With what's happened in banking, the banks are paranoid. And the failure rate on restaurants is very, very high."

Demolishing a house isn't cheap, DeMott says, so Hamilton won't pay to tear down 826 Genesee until he knows he has the financing for the move.

"I'm losing enthusiasm," Hamilton says. "The neighborhood is dying for a grocery, and the powers that be with the purse won't let us."