The historic Singer Building in Mount Rainier will be renovated by the end of summer.

Built in 1936, the three-story building in the 3300 block of Rhode Island Avenue is being redeveloped by the Brookland-based Menkiti Group, its first project in Prince George’s County.

Once the home of a sales shop for the Singer sewing machine company and the First National Bank of Mount Rainier, the brick structure will soon house 11 apartments and 10,000 square feet of commercial space.

Already planned for that space: a 1,360-square-foot cafe by D.C.’s “bar czar” Joe Englert, who helped create the Rock and Roll Hotel and Lucky Bar among a slew of others; Annie’s Ace Hardware, which already has locations in Brookland and Petworth; and arts incubator ReCreative Spaces.

The apartments, which are being marketed as Singer Flats, are now up for lease, with a promised finish date of late summer 2017.

Mount Rainier is quickly becoming a new hotspot along Route 1. (Owners of historic bungalows and Victorians often receive postcards with unsolicited offers from eager investors.) This project, which makes good use of a nice historic building, should only add fuel to that fire.