Julian Rodgers sat in a booth at Joe's Diner on 12th Street in Over-the-Rhine late last Thursday night while a small brigade of workers prepared his restaurant for its soft opening the next day. Even though it was the eleventh hour before his new business would open (and the same day he'd bring hip hop artist Gucci Mane to town) his gift of gab had taken over, and there were no signs he'd stop talking anytime soon.
"I've been getting a lot of non-traditional support, at least not traditional for me," he said. "I think we finally got it right on this one."
Rogers, who also owns
Mixx Ultra Lounge, sees the opening of the diner as his coming out to the neighborhood that doesn't regularly come out to his nightclub and sushi bar.
"Everybody's looking forward to the Diner," he said. "Folks who work at [Hamilton County] Jobs and Family services, people who go to the bars, the lawyers in the area, the neighbors - every time somebody runs past here they give me a thumbs up, pointing at the sign. I have about 40 people a day grab the door, and I have to tell them we're closed. That's why we decided to open tomorrow."
Sitting in a side room that's decorated with retro furniture left by the last business in the space, Vinyl, Rodgers says that the new room will soon receive a neon sign dubbing it "Sloppy Joe's" where a bar will serve drinks and occasionally a DJ will spin lounge music. But the main room -the original diner 'car' - will be just that, a diner, serving breakfast, burgers and shakes from 7 a.m. until 4 a.m. on the weekends, and 7 a.m. until midnight during the week.
Meanwhile, less than one hundred yards away, another recently vacant bar is pulsing with life where two-dozen people sit in lawn chairs or play Bocce on the patio at The World Famous
Neon's Unplugged.
Not even a year ago, people were speculating that Main Street's day had passed as its neighbor, Vine Street, was cornering the market on vitality in Over-the-Rhine. But in 2010 businesses like Joe's and Neon's will be joined on Main Street by other new businesses, many of which are designed to be neighborhood anchors.
Dan Korman is moving his sustainable general store
Park + Vine, currently located a few blocks west on Vine Street, to the old Kaldi's space on Main in September. The store will expand in its new location with a juice bar, groceries, a community table and "green" patio. It will also be filling an iconic space that was once a popular coffee shop and music venue in Main Street's first incarnation as an eclectic, artist hang-out.
"There are people talking about basically the reforestation of Main Street and even some of the business names harkens to, or touch on that," Korman said. "Like our store: Park + Vine,
Iris Book Café,
Another Part of the Forest, [Keep Cincinnati Beautiful's]
'Bloom' office,
Urban Eden…it's just very ironic to me that a lot of the business names along that street have a connection to nature."
And in a natural environment, re-growth starts with lichens, mosses and other first-responders that produce soil in which grasses, shrubs and trees can later set root. An urban neighborhood's renewal often sees a similar progression.
The first bloom on Main happened in the late eighties and early nineties when a bohemian-style movement of artists and young service workers went into the neighborhood and established a small scene of galleries, watering holes and other gathering spots. Slowly the scene grew into the most popular entertainment district in town, but for whatever reason, it was untenable. Those who lived on the street during that time remember thousands of people who came down on weekends and brought litter, noise, crime and other unpleasantries with them, and then left before daybreak.
By the late 2000's most of the bars were gone, but the boom left a lot of potential behind. There is now a solid stretch of residential condos on and around Main from Central Parkway to Liberty Street. Their rents range from affordable to luxury, and most of them are full. The residents say their surrounding neighborhood is increasingly safe and walkable as development on Vine Street continues to the west, and the population grows north of Main up to Prospect Hill.
Chris Seelbach, a six-year resident of Main Street who is running for city council in 2011, thinks the new businesses that are sprouting up there are responding to the amount of new residents.
"We're reopening the kinds of places that this neighborhood will support in the long term," Seelbach said. "We don't have a Subway on the corner, we have a
Fork Heart Knife. We don't have an Applebees, we have Neon's. Those are the kinds of places, I think, that local people want."
From Korman's perspective, the neighborhood is becoming the "natural living" or "organic business" corridor of the city (there are now three yoga studio's there.) It has a diverse population and is arguably the biggest arts district in Cincinnati. Many hope to see it become a shopping destination, buttressed by a few shops that have opened there in the last year or that have survived from the neighborhood's last peak.
The commercial spaces available boast affordable rents, but that can attract hobby businesses and storefronts that are only open one night a month or by appointment - like many of the art galleries. Those spaces color the neighborhood's appeal, but Brian Tiffany of the
OTR Chamber said he would like to see more storefronts that are open all day.
One business the Chamber is backing,
MOTR, will be a live music club and restaurant opening this September in the 1300 block of Main. Dan McCabe, one of the owners who also produces the
MidPoint Music Festival, has always espoused that Cincinnati is a great spot for artists and musicians to live: the rents are cheap, it's within a relatively short drive of much of America's population, and it has a lot of potential energy. For McCabe, Main Street embodies that potential.
"I love how organic the energy is [on Main Street], that natural bubbling up of creative people who want to flex their creative muscle," he said. "It's natural and organic and that's what you want to bank on."
But the neighborhood isn't ready to call what's happening now a comeback.
Seelbach likened the current resurgence to the 'Roller Bowler' game found at fairs and amusement parks where a player rolls a bowling ball over a hump on two steel rails, trying to give it just the right amount of energy to stay on the other side.
"We've been over the hump a million times it feels like, but will we be able to stay there?" he asks.
Photography by Scott Beseler
Julian Rodgers at Joe's Diner
Joe's Diner facade
Neons Unplugged
Main St. and Michael Bany alley
MOTR