A clean slate for downtown?

Let's think back a few years to the late 1990s, when Houston's downtown revitalization was beginning in earnest and a variety of bars, restaurants, clubs and entertainment venues were opening in the area that once was a virtual no-man's-land after business hours. Everything seemed like it was going well for a while — Bayou Place was developed, the baseball stadium opened, old buildings were being restored, some great businesses popped up — and then, over the next few years, virtually every street in the newly flourishing district was torn up for street reconstruction or the light rail line. Tropical Storm Allison helped chase off what street construction didn't, and finally, in 2007, downtown is — well, according to residents who spoke up at a meeting a couple of weeks ago, it's not such a great place anymore. There are too many nightclubs and too much noise, they said, and not enough retail options and variety.

So an article in the Chronicle this weekend was all the more interesting: It talked about how a number of downtown clubs have closed in the past year, giving business owners a potential clean slate in the Main Street/Market Square area. We didn't even know so many clubs had closed — among them the Boaka Bar, Mercury Room, Jones Bar, Six Degrees, Opus, Twelve Spot and M Bar — but that would explain why downtown has seemed so empty on weekend nights these past few months. It's potentially a good thing for downtown, some say:

"Property owners are beginning to say, 'We need to be thoughtful about who we're leasing to,' " Eury said.

This month, the Downtown District formed an advisory committee to guide the area's economic development and improve security and parking.

"The problematic clubs, many of which were sold and subleased to less professional operators, are emptying out," said [real estate broker Larry] Plotsky, who is working with the advisory committee.

Some of the business operators downtown are crying foul, though, claiming that the city is trying to force them out of business. "They're harassing us and our patrons," Forrest deSpain, managing partner of Grasshopper, said. "If they don't want nightclubs, they shouldn't have given us licenses." That was the same general idea Kirubel Tafesse, owner of Suede Lounge, talked about when cops raided his bar last month and arrested bartenders for allegedly serving alcohol to minors: "The big problem is with the city not wanting clubs here," Tafesse said. "It's a shame the city is doing this even though we pay our taxes like everybody else."

Of course, there are still restaurants and bars downtown that are doing well — what downtown needs, some say, is to supplement those with other businesses that will encourage people to walk from place to place eating, shopping and enjoying entertainment. "If they could just fill up the [historic] district's main flour blocks — just 10 or 15 spaces — you'd be set," Mia Bella owner Youssef Nafaa said. Of course, what goes in those spaces will be the interesting part: "It seems the city of Houston wants to move us out so they can put in TGI Friday's and Baby Gap," deSpain said.