If there is a more snake-bitten spot for a restaurant in Durham than the intersection of Duke and Morgan streets, I'd like to see it.

For it is here that the Weeping Radish restaurant came and went, along with seven other eateries -- all in the span of 17 years. That's got to be a record of some sort. All manner of restaurant, serving everything from German to Cajun to good ol' American cuisine tried and failed to make a go of it there, the Bermuda Triangle of restaurant addresses.

Go figure. It's less than one block from the bustling Brightleaf Square retail area, which has some of the most successful restaurants in town, including Satisfaction, Pop's, Taverna Nikos, Devine's and Anotherthyme. You'd think people eating there would go one block over to dine at Morgan and Main -- at least once. But nooooooo.

So it has come to this: Two real estate guys are going to live up to their firm's name -- Maverick Partners -- and do something entirely different with the 23,000-square-foot restaurant graveyard: turn it into office and commercial space, and maybe some homes.

All it took was 17 years to figure out that Morgan and Main was not the "location, location, location" for a restaurant.