Downtown has soul, lacks heart

 

BY JANELLE GELFAND | ENQUIRER STAFF WRITER

 

Holly Yao was surprised when she walked out of Cincinnati Opera's "A Masked Ball" at Music Hall this summer and found no restaurants or bars nearby to finish the evening.

 

http://news.enquirer.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060917/ENT/609170317/1025/LIFE

This is interesting as some of these comments are the gripes I have about Dayton, especially an after-the-show restaurant.  There are little places downtown one can stop after the show for cocktails, but it would be nice to have a restaurant.

 

As for Cincinnati, I always thought the Piatt Park area would be a good place for little late-night piano bars or small bistro-style restuarants.

 

If OTR ever gentrifies the area around Music Hall and the Ensemble Theatre..the southern part of OTR...could become a good spot for after-the-show spots.

 

But, developers say, critical mass will follow the boom in condo-building and other development. Last year, 500 people moved into tony new downtown condos, bringing the center city population to nearly 7,000. This year, developers are breaking ground on nearly 700 residential units, expected to bring 1,000 more people to live downtown.

 

These are good numbers!

 

 

 

for now, whether it's a Bengals game or a show, suburbanites will drive downtown, park and go home, says Ed Stern, producing artistic director of Playhouse in the Park. His theater patrons tell him that they want convenience over quality.

 

"That is our obituary - all our obituaries," he says. "That is the obit for downtown

 

This applys to all the cities in Ohio, I think.

 

 

 

for now, whether it's a Bengals game or a show, suburbanites will drive downtown, park and go home, says Ed Stern, producing artistic director of Playhouse in the Park. His theater patrons tell him that they want convenience over quality.

 

Maybe they could open a McDonalds in Music Hall.

 

But for now, whether it's a Bengals game or a show, suburbanites will drive downtown, park and go home, says Ed Stern, producing artistic director of Playhouse in the Park. His theater patrons tell him that they want convenience over quality.

 

Isn't that what TV is for ?

People distort in their mind the proximity of things in the major cities (since everything's in Manhattan, everything must be within a 5 minute walk of everything else) -- it's certainly every bit as much of a hike in Manhattan to go to disperate entertainment events.  Aside from the "Broadway" theaters, the rest of the theaters and music venues are spread all over Manhattan (Carnegie Hall is miles from Hammerstein Ballroom which is miles from Lincoln Center which is mile from Score's), miles and miles apart from each other, as are major museums and other cultural institutions.  In the middle of the night, there are large sections of Manhattan where you won't see anyone walking around and hardly anything's open and trash piled up on the sidewalks.    

 

And if people complain because they want this or that kind of restaurant or bar or music, you yourself go and open that place or learn how to play and instrument, write songs, and put a group together.  People think "culture" should just fall out of the sky and be right there waiting for them when they are doing nothing to contribute to it.  Sipping a fancy coffee at a little sidewalk table talking about your shopping trip to Miami doesn't do jack shit to advance the arts.  Try to make it as a neighborhood bar with downtown's rents -- you might make some money, but you aren't going to get rich unless you own the building and/or are running drugs and women out of it like the Phoenix Cafe. 

 

There was a jazz club in Garfield Park until recently, The Blue Wisp.  The Wisp was originally in O'Bryonville, then it moved to 8th St. around 1990 and it moved to its present location I think in 2003.  I went there dozens of times as a high schooler, they were infamous for serving not just underaged but way underaged.  But the larger issue is that Cincinnati actually has something resembling a jazz scene because of CCM and a handful of very dedicated people who haven't moved out but guess what -- people in general, and not just in Cincinnati, aren't interested in jazz.  In NYC, a big chunk of the audience in the legendary jazz clubs are tourists from Japan.   

 

 

Holly Yao was surprised when she walked out of Cincinnati Opera's "A Masked Ball" at Music Hall this summer and found no restaurants or bars nearby to finish the evening.

 

Yeah, because there was a bunch of bars and shit there before she walked in.

 

 

Very slick, Janelle.

 

 

Cdawg: I'd think it applies more to sports fans than theater patrons, though. Sports stadiums are completely overrated as far as economic development goes. You can take the suburbanite out of the suburb, but you can't take the suburb out of the suburbanite.

 

 

Except for Pittsburgh. We went to a Pirates game in the middle of the workday and left trying to find a place to eat. Waiting list everywhere ... and this is the Pirates, where talking about! Imagine a decent baseball team?! Imagine an evening game?! Jesus ... this is how it's done folks. I'm sorry, but for as much as Cincinnatians like to rip on P-Burgh ... this is the example on how a river city should be ran. With North Shore, South Shore, South Side, etc ... with bars, restaurants, etc., galore all surrounding the river ... what more can you ask for? The only real problem they have is a good public transportation that connect all of the dots. It doesn't necessarily have to be rail, just make it accessible and cheap.

 

 

 

>Very slick, Janelle.

 

She definitely set out to write this piece with an idea in mind, then just found people to give her quotes that proved her point.  And I think only women culture reporters ever use the word "tony". 

 

>Except for Pittsburgh.

 

I know exactly what you are talking about, and it is a direct result of where the Reds stadium is located.  The Machine Room restaurant has floundered for obvious reasons.  There is a new bar on Pete Rose Way just west of the stadium which I haven't been to which is the only new bar to open as a result of $1 Billion in public investment. 

 

Once again, if the Reds Stadium had been built at the confluence of Reading Rd. and Eggleston, we wouldn't be having this conversation.  Building the stadium on the riverfront was a disaster.  Anything like this should attempt to bolster an existing area, not start over from scratch, which wouldn't have even been the case on the riverfront if Caddy's, Hurricane Surf Club, and the rest hadn't been demolished to provide parking for Paul Brown Stadium.   

 

PNC Park was simply built closer to the bars which were there when Three Rivers was still standing.  There are a few restaurants built into the baseball stadium itself which, unlike The Machine Room, aren't 30ft. above street level.  In fact they're directly across the street from those preexisting bars and directly on the way to the stadium from downtown. 

 

Here is a link to a satellite image of PNC park and its environs:

 

http://www.google.com/maphp?hl=en&q=pittsburgh&ie=UTF8&z=17&ll=40.447388,-80.003783&spn=0.003862,0.010536&t=k&om=1

 

And here is where the Reds stadium should have been built:

 

http://www.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=cincinnati&ie=UTF8&z=17&ll=39.10826,-84.506353&spn=0.003938,0.010536&t=k&om=1

 

And yes Pittsburgh is even extending its subway under the river to the new stadiums.

 

You are right about the stadium, but we need to move on.  It is a very nice park and what is this about stuff not being around.  There is Game Day and In Between right there, plus there are several restaurants within three blocks and a boatload more will be there once the Square is finished.

It's way too cut off, thanks to the highway ramps.  We got along fine without Fort Washington Way for a year while it was being reconstructed, which convinced me that the road isn't even necessary.  Previously the highway was 3X2 lanes, it was the many ramps which caused trouble.  In its new configuration without the trench ramps they could have rebuilt it 3X2 or even 2X2 but no, they had to not only build 8 lanes, but center emergency shoulders as well.  A 2X2 trench with outside emergency shoulders would have been only 72ft. wide, costing half as much to turn into a tunnel.  Half as many steel beems, half as much ventilation.   

I still need to spend more time in downtown Cincinnati, but the few times I have been, I was always impressed. Cincinnati has these very colorful buildings and a surpsing number of various street-level tenants downtown. It has a lot of character. Blue Wisp, Kastaldi's, the Omni-Hilton Hotel, Carew, Foutain Square and the department stores are my favorite things about downtown Cincinnati.

 

I completely agree with the comments about people going to sports games and heading home. People say that downtown shopping and dining can't make it old urban centers, but sporting events seem to draw a lot of people from all over. Why wouldn't shopping, dining and entertainment work too if it was done right? I don't buy the arguments about paying for parking, the distance or whatever because all different types of people aren't detered to attend sporting events even though this isn't in everyone's backyard and parking isn't free.

FWW cannot be capped off soon enough! Would the cost really be that high? I mean for a city the size of Cincinnati and a projected as small as this, shouldn't this have been done a long time ago?