'Seamless vibrancy': Court Street is Downtown's new dining hot spot and it's no accident

This article is part of The Enquirer's Future of Downtown series.

The outdoor seating area at Onolicious was nearly full on a recent Tuesday afternoon as customers sat, gobbling up plates of shoyu chicken, musubi sandwiches and pineapple-spiked iced tea.

Inside the downtown Cincinnati Hawaiian restaurant, which opened in an alley off Court Street in May, island music played over the sound system as images of tropical fish swam on a TV.

Across the alley, Mike Stankovich was watering the herbs he grows outside his Mid-City restaurant, which serves seemingly straightforward dishes that always pack a surprise.

Around the block, revelers swept themselves away to Key West while sipping rum-based cocktails with names like Snows of Kilimanjaro and A Moveable Feast at the Ernest Hemingway-inspired bar, Pilar.

Welcome to Court Street, the new center of Downtown dining.

The goal: 'Seamless vibrancy'

There is an energy on Court Street that you don’t see in other parts of Downtown. Since its $5.5 million overhaul led by the Cincinnati City Center Development Corporation, or 3CDC, along with Kroger and Rookwood Properties, its sidewalks are wider, its historic storefronts are spiffed up and the upper floors of the buildings have been turned into new apartments and condominiums.

This year the street played host to the Cincinnati Asian Food Fest and, three times a year, 3CDC, in partnership with Frisch’s, constructs a full-fledged roller skating rink that brings people here from all over the city.

The seeds for Court Street’s revival were sown in 2019, when Kroger, whose headquarters at 1014 Vine St. anchor the block, initiated a plan to build a 45,000-square-foot grocery store on the corner of Court and Walnut. That project – which also involved an 18-story mixed-use development with 139 market-rate apartments, now managed by Rookwood Properties, and a 560-space parking garage, managed by 3CDC – was completed in the fall of 2019.

Leaders of 3CDC wanted to build on the new grocery by creating a vibrant entertainment and shopping district that would help fill in a gap between Over-the-Rhine to its north and Fountain Square to the south.

“If you stood on Central Parkway and looked north of Vine Street, there was a ton of positive activity, but there was nothing on the other side,” said Joe Rudemiller, a 3CDC spokesman. “The Downtown experience we wanted people to have while walking from Fountain Square up Vine Street was (one of) seamless vibrancy and activity, with restaurants and retailers until you hit Over-the-Rhine, instead of that dead zone,” he said. Their focus was the section of Court Street between Vine and Walnut streets.

The first step was addressing the layout of the street, which then included two two-lane streets running both directions, with a little-used median in-between. The sidewalks were also in poor shape, Rudemiller said, as were many of the historic buildings.

“It was an odd layout,” he said. “We felt like we had an opportunity to widen the sidewalks and reclaim some of that space for pedestrians so it could be another great civic space.”

Before breaking ground, 3CDC formed a $50,000 pedestrian task force chaired by former Cincinnati mayor Roxanne Qualls and made up of several business leaders.

“Re-imagining that space was a big piece of the puzzle,” said Rudemiller. All-in-all, 3CDC and the city of Cincinnati contributed $25,000 each for the task force, according to the 3CDC web site.

The renovation of Court Street Plaza was completed in spring 2021. Adding the Kroger and Rookwood Properties project to the total, 3CDC and its partners have so far invested $123.8 million in this block of Court Street, though the bulk of that money was used  for the Kroger development.

Don't worry, you can still get pickle loaf

It’s not as if Court Street was abandoned before 3CDC arrived. There was already a popular Vietnamese restaurant, a tailor shop, a health clinic, several street-level offices and a Skyline Chili parlor on the corner of Court and Vine.  Several of those businesses remain, but since the renovation started, the owners of the Vietnamese restaurant decided to retire, though Gelter said 3CDC offered them a new spot on Court Street. The clinic, run by the city of Cincinnati, also decided to close due to a lack of patient visits, Rudemiller said. Then of course, there's Avril-Bleh butcher shop.

On a recent Wednesday, customers were lined up behind the counter at Avril-Bleh as they have for the past century, waiting for owner Len Bleh’s famous sausages, steaks, cottage hams and classic-style cold-cuts such as Dutch loaf and pickle loaf. No matter how much change comes to Court Street, it seems Avril-Bleh isn't going anywhere.

Rudemiller said the butcher shop was an essential building block to its vision of Court Street, which is why it worked closely with Bleh to come up with a way to not only keep him there but make major improvements to the space.

"Avril-Bleh is an institution in this city,” Rudemiller said. “They have been around forever and they do great business.”

The upper floors of Avril-Bleh, 33 Court St. and 35 Court St., were converted into what’s now known as Avril Lofts: 14 condos spread across the upper floors of the four buildings, ranging from small studios to 2-bedroom flats.

COVID comes to Court Street

Among the first tenants to sign on to a Court Street lease with 3CDC was Pilar, at 56 E. Court St., which came on board in early 2020. It is owned by Four Entertainment Group, or 4EG, whose portfolio includes dozens of restaurants in Greater Cincinnati, including the Lackman, Low Spark and Japp’s, in Over-the-Rhine, as well as venues in Columbus and Chicago.

4EG co-founder Bob Deck said the company had several positive collaborations with 3CDC in the past, so partnering up with them on Court Street seemed like a no-brainer.

The group signed a five year lease with the option of two more five year leases, Deck said.

“When we signed on to open Pilar on Court Street, we felt like it was going to develop the connection with the Central Business District and connect it to Over-the-Rhine,” said Deck. “With the new Kroger going in, we knew it would be a great little corner bar.”

Little did they know about the stormy seas that lay ahead.

It’s important to remember that the entire Court Street project was just getting underway when COVID-19 led to closures, followed by indoor and outdoor dining restrictions. That made Pilar’s opening particularly hard.

“This was originally a pre-COVID project,” Deck said. “There was a lot of momentum at that point in time. Then COVID hit and the development of the area just kind of stalled.” While Deck decided to take a chance on Court Street he admits it was a hard slog. In its first year of operation, Pilar was barely breaking even, Deck explained. “It was not what we expected in the beginning,” he said.

With few other restaurants signed on when 4EG signed its lease, Deck and his business partners were hoping a planned food court on the second floor of the new Kroger store would help feed into Pilar’s business. But because of COVID, it took much longer than expected to get that part of the project off the ground.

“Pre-COVID, there was a lot of momentum on that second floor. We wanted synergy between the two, but that momentum was lost after COVID.”

COVID also hindered Stankovich’s plans. Technically, Mid-City was the first restaurant now open on Court Street to sign on with 3CDC. Stankovich signed a letter of intent to open a spot with a small patio for outdoor seating in January 2020, just two months before the pandemic. Once the restaurant restrictions were put into effect, he second-guessed his decision and thought about pulling out.

In the end, Stankovich stuck with 3CDC, mainly because 3CDC stuck with him. They agreed not to charge him rent until the pandemic restrictions lifted and he could safely open the restaurant.

Mid-City opened the doors to its bar area in October 2021, with the dining room portion opening about eight months later. So far, it's been wildly successful, receiving national accolades. In January 2023, one of its chefs, Francisco Alfaro, was named a semi-finalist for the prestigious James Beard Awards.

Meanwhile, Deck said he’s feeling optimistic about Court Streets’ future, thanks in part to Mid-City and Onolicious bringing in crowds, sales at Pilar have doubled since last year. And with at least four new restaurants scheduled to open by this fall, the momentum has shifted. “We have turned the corner,” he said. FC Cincinnati games bring in more customers, as do festivals and other activities.

'Not Downtown and ... not Over-the-Rhine'

The newly revived entertainment district has generated plenty of fresh interest in this historic downtown Cincinnati street, especially from restaurateurs who see it as an attractive alternative to Over-the-Rhine and other parts of the city.

“I like that it is not Downtown and it’s not Over-the-Rhine,” said Stankovich, who also owns Longfellow Bar in Over-the-Rhine, a beloved watering hole with an affable staff, something that 3CDC executive vice president of real estate, Adam Gelter said made getting him here a priority.

“I always said Cincinnati needed a pedestrian-only corridor,” Stankovich said. “We only have Findlay and Court Street,” he said. Stankovich also likes the programming 3CDC has brought to the area.

Onolcious owner Vincente Benedett said that, after he outgrew his original location, a small food stall at Oakley Kitchen, he thought about moving to Mason, which is home to a large Asian and Pacific Islander population. But the vibe he found on Court Street was something Benedett, who signed the lease for his property this past May, couldn’t pass up.

“I knew when I saw this location that this is what I wanted,” he said. "We now see a whole lot of people coming from the neighborhood, as well as the loyal clientele we already had who followed us here."

The leasing terms for 3CDC tenants vary from business to business, Gelter said, and depend on the financial needs of the tenants. “We run the gamut on how we do this depending on the financial backing of the (tenant),” he said. Therefore established restaurant groups such as 4EG or Thunderdome pay more of the costs, while smaller upstart businesses, such as Onolicious, pay less.

Gelter said 3CDC provides a white box space that each tenant can design and provide anywhere from 50% to 70% of the financial burden to get them open, including architectural consultations and general contracting, with the balance coming from the tenant. The money 3CDC puts into each property is supposed to be paid back via the rent.

In the next several months, Court Street will be welcoming several new restaurants, including Court Street Kitchen, an American bistro, Pata Roja, which specializes in tacos, as well as a restaurant specializing in vegan food.

On Sept. 6 it was also announced that another James Beard semifinalist, Hideki Harada, will open a Daruma, a Japanese-style convenience store that will sell sushi and bento boxes, this fall. Haruda also owns Kiki, in College Hill, and Sen, at Findlay Market.

"What we are looking for is a variety of businesses that serve food at different times,” Rudemiller said. "We want people here eating lunch, coming down for happy hour and eating dinner, too. That way, the momentum here will only continue.”

This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Where to eat in Downtown Cincinnati? Try Court Street