By Jill Colvin
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
MIDTOWN — Goodbye sex tapes, hello sex on the beach.
The "Peep World" porn shop across from Madison Square Garden, with its glowing red awning and vintage neon sign, will close its doors later this year to make way for a new rooftop bar.
The space will become the second location of Overlook Lounge, a popular nightspot, which currently operates in Turtle Bay on the east side.
Manager Patrick Evangelista and his team plan to spend several million dollars to renovate the space into "a very large gastropub," they told Midtown Community Community Board 5's public safety committee Wednesday night.
They plan to add a second floor to the building and open a portion of the third floor as a rooftop deck with a retractable roof that can be closed when it's rainy.
With so few residents living nearby, board members said it was a great space for a new bar and voted unanimously to support the plan.
The team agreed to turn off the rooftop music at 10 p.m. on Sunday through Wednesday and 11 p.m. the rest of the week. They'd close it at midnight Sunday through Wednesday and 1 a.m on weekend nights.
Evangelista said he hopes the new bar will be a better welcome to tourists arriving in the city via bus and train than the current storefront.
"That doesn't need to be your first sight," Evangelista said.
The new space is set to open in early summer of 2012.
But Suresh Wasantha, 35, who works at a small variety store on the ground floor of the building that serves as a second entrance into the porn shop, said the plan will mean he'll lose his job.
"It's a bad idea for us, but we can't do anything about it," he said.