Question for Phil

[northside lurker]

Phil addressed this in another thread. http://mahoningvalley.info/forum/index.php?topic=3648.msg9833#msg9833

As far as I know, there's nothing stopping someone from opening a nonfood related business downtown.  Hopefully, more service oriented businesses will open to serve people who choose to live downtown.

[Towntalk]

Perhaps Phil would be best qualified to answer this question. Just how many restaurants can downtown Youngstown reasonably support?

Given the economic conditions of the valley, and all the other needs that there are out there for retail trade such as grocery stores, drug stores, etc. what's with the obsession with more and more restaurants that would close within a couple of years leaving us back to square one?

Lets face it, downtown isn't the busiest location in the county during the day, and aside from when there is an event at one of the entertainment venues, it's a ghost town.

Ten, twenty, turn the first floors of every building in downtown Youngstown into a restaurant?

How many of the restaurants that are already downtown are open seven days a week from 7 AM to 3 AM the next morning?

Jay has observed that few of the restaurants that he's visited have waiting lines due to all the tables being occupied.

It takes a whole lot of money to open a half way decent restaurant and the costs are climbing every day ... utilities ... costs of food ... staffing ... the costs of constructing a restaurant ... and costs of materials, obviously there aren't too many people that want to risk their money on a venture that shows no profit?

Personally, I'd like to see some movie theaters downtown, but I know that this will never happen considering the fact that I can utilize Netflik to view the latest movies in the comfort of my home on a big screen TV at much less that it would cost to see the same movie at a theater.