The Birmingham City Council on Tuesday approved a two-year extension on a $3.2 million loan that helped renovate the historic Pizitz building.

David Silverstein is a principal at Bayer Properties, which financed the renovation of the seven-story, 255,000-square-foot building built in 1923. He told the council that the break in the $200,000 annual payments is needed so the company can rebrand and remarket the space, particularly the Food Hall. He said that portion of the business experienced a significant downturn during the COVID pandemic.

“We did not receive any PP money,” Silverstein said, referring to federal business loans offered during the pandemic. “We haven’t asked the city for funding, and we have the need to get some relief so that we can spend dollars to make improvements to the food hall, bring in new tenants, new businesses.”

Silverstein said his firm plans to increase the variety of food offerings and branch out into more retail spaces.

The city allocated a $3.2 million Housing and Urban Development loan to Pizitz in 2015 to help with the $60 million project.

The former Pizitz Department Store, which operated until 1988, had sat dormant for decades before the food hall was opened in 2017.

“I want to thank this group for continuing to work on this anchor property,” Councilor Hunter Williams said. “No one wants to see this become a boarded up storefront again. This loan extension is very worthwhile, because the alternative of having this space go dark would be very detrimental to the work we’ve been doing to have more restaurants and businesses locate to this area.”