It'd be interesting what google deemed to be bad about the website.

Also, when the author writes "In the end – I had to ditch the entire site. So we’re starting over." i am _really_ wondering. The only reason i can think of, to rewrite a whole wegsite for google would be if the website was horrible anyway and i planned to restructure it anyway. I have the feeling that the admin didn't really look into unblocking his site. Quick google gives a lot of resources of what to do when a website is blocked by google.