Plans for a new downtown Flowery Branch retail and office building are still in the works, but the owner must first get an OK from the city’s Historic Preservation Commission.

Karen Ching is set to go before the board Feb. 1 to get permission to build on a vacant lot off Main and Mitchell streets, where a 121-year-old home once stood.

“We hope to get a building permit 30 days after the (meeting),” she said.

A certificate of appropriateness must be obtaining by property owners seeking to make a “material change” in the property’s appearance, including construction of a new building, in the city’s historic district.

Ching said preserving the white clapboard, two-story home on the property would have been too costly.

“It just wasn’t worth it, but we have saved some of the wood and … will be using some of it,” she said. “We’re also going to name the building after the original (owner), who also owned the dry goods store here on Main Street.”

Peyton’s Pie Company, which has a location off Peachtree Industrial Boulevard in Suwanee, is looking to open at the location. Also, Growlers on Main plans to move there from its current city-owned spot at 5509 Main St.

“Where we’re at right now is a good location, but it’s going to be nice to have a spot that was designed by us,” Growlers co-owner Robert Sabbath has said.

Plans call for making the new store “more of a loungy, hang-out area,” Sabbath said.

Nicholas St. Clair, owner and chef at Antebellum restaurant, also off Main Street, has said he has wanted to try his hand at wood-fired pizza and originally had planned to open his first Peyton’s Pie Company location in Flowery Branch.

But he ended up finding “a great spot” off Peachtree Industrial Boulevard in Suwanee and opening his first Peyton’s Pie Company there.

With the kinks worked out at his first Peyton’s Pie Company location, “we’re ready to move into the second one,” St. Clair said.

At one time, parking spaces were planned on the property, but that has changed, with Ching now looking at adding office space in the building.

“We really feel confident about the business district being extended up to Mitchell Street,” she said.

The city also is planning some improvements in the area — repaving Mitchell Street from Main Street to the new roundabout at Lights Ferry Connector and restriping on Mitchell for 31 parallel parking spots, City Manager Bill Andrew said.