The 91-year-old Lorraine Apartments on St. Charles Avenue have a new lease on life and can move forward with renovations after the city council corrected a zoning problem last week that could have kept the historic building shuttered indefinitely. Built in 1920, the Lorraine was given zoning in 1953 for a two-family residential structure, but as long as the building remained in continuous use, that classification was not enforced. It was bought in 2008 and closed for renovations, but the developers found substantial unexpected problems with its mechanical systems, and the project fell by the wayside. When the owners recently attempted to resume the project, they found that the building’s status as an apartment building has expired, and that its zoning would only allow, at most, a double.