Investors who buy up dives and their buildings buy the old Jacob Wirth building

Two investors who are part of a group that has bought up a number of Boston-area dives and their buildings in recent years today bought the building that houses the shuttered Jacob Wirth restaurant on Stuart Street for $5.27 million, according to Suffolk County Registry of Deeds records.

The records show that Anthony Simboli of Rowley sold the historic building to City Realty managing partner Fred Starikov and Julius Sokol. Both are investors in the Greater Boston Bar Co., which started buying bars in 2018 - some of which it has since resold.

In 2021, under his own name, Sokol won licensing-board approval to re-open Jacob Wirth, using a liquor license he bought from the owners of the former Daisy Buchanan's on Newbury Street.

At a licensing-board hearing, Sokol said he planned to re-open Jacob Wirth pretty much as it was before it closed following a 2018 fire - after some 150 years of serving German food and beer.

Sokol's proposal was the third for the shuttered landmark. Plans to remake it as a sports bar and gut it to become a marijuana dispensary both failed.