re: downtown baton rouge resturant scene

Varsity used to have great bands and talent come through. It’s been years since anyone well known or decent has played a gig there. Especially non country acts like rock or metal.

Yeah I just have had thousands of high life at the moon.

Spanish Moon was bought by the Republic New Orleans, but they ran into money troubles and permitting issues during the renovations and Covid caught them before they could reopen. I think they’re gone pecan.

The Varsity’s acts got stale after a while and then their manager and booking guys left and it really declined prior to Covid.

The entire live touring music industry is basically going to have to be rebuilt from scratch after Covid as all the major touring/promotion companies and festivals went under as well as most of the smallish and mid-sized venues.

My wife and I moved to Baton Rouge in 2012 when we were dating, she was 23 I was 24. We drove around downtown when we were apartment shopping and were shocked with the lack of anything going on. Regardless, we moved and suddenly there seemed to be an explosion of activity downtown- fun runs, jambalaya jams, live after 5, more bars and restaurants popping up- I remember an awesome bar with ski ball above Restaurant IPO. Plenty of nights with open corporate bar tabs at the roux house and B&Ts. We went to city bar, the office, etc when we wanted to just get hammered and dance- this was right around the time when Uber finally came to the city.

Then suddenly it seemed like it just evaporated. Our social circle moved to mid city and southdowns. Maybe we just got old? Now we live in Jefferson Parish. Oh well.

I think the city leaders and some influential old baton rouge crowd citizens just don't want too see change downtown...they are happy too keep it BORING

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I always thought a Nicholson and Government St. streetcar line would be a good way to help revitalize downtown.

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Well, we had part of this in the works until our current mayor killed it. She's more concerned about revitalizing Plank Road

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Is Wine Loft still open? Forgot about them.

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Nobody has mentioned Blend , which would be at the top of my list of downtown spots. Is it still around?

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Wine Loft is gone, turned into Blend (to Sun God). I actually don't know if Blend is still open post-covid.

I work down here, but pretty much never do drinks after work in this area to really get an idea of how things are doing.

I do think that as long as we are focusing on overpass and mid city as "hot spots", we aren't going to see a lot of new stuff going into downtown. I really don't think we have the level of tourism or the population size (and large enough demographics that go out) for there to be multiple hot spots going at one time.

I don’t think a lack of popularity killed White Star. It was packed every time I went in there, even just a month before covid. Covid restrictions , and covid restrictions alone, for the most part, killed it. It’s hard to make a concept work when the government makes that concept illegal (unless you’re selling an addictive product, of course).

The beer garden has been massively successful on government street, absolutely packed to the gills with long waits to get in.

Ivar’s at the Overpass has been killing it as well. It had a long line out the door of sorority girls waiting to get in last night. I don’t understand the appeal of waiting in line to get into a sports bar, but apparently, Ivar’s is the hip place to be right now for the hot coed crowd.

I think the decline in Downtown is linked to the exodus of unmarried 20 and 30-something professionals from BR. BR’s economy declined tremendously from around 2016 to now. That’s thousands of good jobs lost and a lot more professionals exiled to Houston, Dallas, Atlanta, and Denver. BR has always been a one-horse town, and there’s just only so many young hip bar-frequenting type people to go around. The 18-21 year old college kids are always going to want the crappy tigerland experience. The late 30’s and up crowd with kids are always going to want the cover band and cowboy hat experience (Texas Club, Ice House, Cadillac, etc), so the money is made on that 22-30 something no kids crowd which BR’s economy is driving away. BR needs economic growth and more white collar jobs to keep those people here post LSU to support a more diverse bar scene.

In addition, BR needs more people living and working closer to downtown so that those bars and restaurants become a more central gathering place rather than an out of the way destination for that crowd. Finally, BR needs to cultivate experiences unique to downtown to encourage people to go there rather than elsewhere, and I think repealing the open container laws to legalize bar-hopping is a good way to do that.

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3. Downtown development was increasingly seen as racist by the BLM factions of the political left throughout the 2010's (BLM movement, and "why aren't we doing this in NBR"), and a misuse of tax dollars by the political right. Kip-type Democrats and young professionals near the political center were squeezed by both ends.

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This paragraph is 100% accurate.

You can add...exodus from the state not just baton rouge...