New clubs and eateries turn the quarter into a destination

CARLOS ORTIZ The Nathan Heleine Quartet plays jazz on a recent Saturday at Caffe dell' Arte. The coffee bar is the newest eatery on St. Paul Street, one of several businesses reshaping the area into an attraction. St. Paul resurrected Caffe dell'Arte 187 St. Paul St., 454-0240. Club Vibes 150 Andrews St., 234-1519. Industry 155 St. Paul St., 262-4570. The Marquee 40 St. Paul St., 232-7340. Red Social Lounge 171 St. Paul St., 234-0888. Sienna Grill & Bar 151 St. Paul St., 546-4070. Tapas 177 177 St. Paul St., 262-2090. Water Street Music Hall 204 N. Water St., 325-5600.

By Jeff Spevak
Democrat and Chronicle

(Sept. 20, 2001) -- The Nathan Heleine Quartet plays jazz on a recent Saturday at Caffe dell' Arte. The coffee bar is the newest eatery on St. Paul Street, one of several businesses reshaping the area into an attraction.

It's a Saturday night, and a white stretch limo pulls up to Industry, a new dance club on St. Paul Street. Eight women -- all celebrating a wedding coming up the next weekend -- spill out of the car's open doors like spawning salmon making their way upstream.

They're touring the dance clubs, having already hit Tremors, the Centers at High Falls, Jillian's, Gotham and Velocity. Now they've finally arrived at the St. Paul Quarter.

Kadie Krivitza is the 26-year-old bride-to-be, easily discerned from her veil and T-shirt signed by about 30 guys during the course of the evening.

''I love it,'' says Krivitza, who manages a liquor store. ''It's different from Penfield. It's city life. There's more people, more action.''

Indeed, judging by the once-vacant spaces now filled by halogen lights and booming dance rhythms, the St. Paul Quarter may be the city's up-and-coming district of clubs and restaurants.

The action is on the dance floor as Krivitza talks. Powerful lights sweep through the murky interior as several women from the wedding party find a couple of guys and get down with some dirty dancing that would make Patrick Swayze look as uptight as a Riverdancer.

''I think it's a nice area,'' says Krivitza's longtime pal, 26-year-old Melanie Schukraft of Gates. ''But it's really not that crowded.''

The district is a work-in-progress, with some businesses thriving, some struggling. As it has for years now, the quarter's anchor, Water Street Music Hall, draws hundreds of people to shows that couldn't be more diverse. This past Wednesday, the club was to offer the eclectic David Byrne. Coming up are college-audience pleasers Sarah Harmer and Sarah Slean (Saturday) and gone-to-seed rocker Ian Hunter (Oct. 30).

The quarter's two established restaurants, Tapas 177 and Sienna, seem well populated. ''This place was one of the first places to get started here,'' says Tapas 177 regular Donna Schlosser-Long. ''And now places are just sprouting up everywhere.''

She's been coming to the ''world-eat'' bistro once a week for about five years. Its restaurant offers the most eclectic menu in the city. ''Greek Night,'' the first Monday of each month, is a St. Paul Quarter legend. People used to break plates on the floor, but ''girls with open-toed shoes were getting it caught in their feet,'' says 24-year-old Jeff Sattora, a Tapas bartender for 2 1/2 years.

''We have people dancing on the bar all the time,'' he says. ''While we're making drinks. We're serving them right between their legs. On Halloween, I was dancing on the bar in my kilt.''

It's too early to draw any conclusions about the four-month-old Caffe dell'Arte. It is after the same crowd courted by Tapas, although perhaps minus the bar-top dancing. A former machine shop, the long splinter of an artsy space opens at 7 a.m. for coffee and is slowly building its lunch and dinner ambitions.

With jazz in the air, local art on the walls and imported wine in the cellar, it's everything a Renaissance man or woman desires. And some of the jazz is New York City high-end: Saxophonist Eric Alexander and guitarist Leni Stern, respectively, play the next two Saturdays.

The quarter's evolution into a dance-club district is the most recent development -- the block's existing businesses are eager to develop the area as an entertainment hot spot, and the warehouse spaces seem to lend themselves to dance floors. Yet that evolution is also the most tenuous. All seek a balance between the red-brick interiors of their character-filled spaces and the polished-steel austerity of New York City dance clubs.

Two blocks away, The Marquee is physically removed from the quarter yet aligned financially and philosophically, catering to the African-American dance audience. Red Social Lounge plays host to some live shows, but for the most part is in a chase for the Quarter's dance crowd with Industry and the slightly edgier Club Vibes.

Piranha, which at one time seemed to be the major player on the Quarter's dance-club scene, no longer caters to the dance crowd. John Chmiel -- general manager of Water Street Music Hall and Piranha, which share the same century-old warehouse -- has temporarily closed the space. He plans to turn it into a sports bar-restaurant, the Club at Water Street, within the next month or two. Piranha's problem, he explains, was oversaturation of dance floors. There aren't enough dancers to go around.

''There's something going on every night of the week but Tuesday. And everyone's doing the same crap,'' Dan Dangler said in mid-July, when Piranha's closing was announced. A frequent DJ at the quarter's clubs, Dangler had been bringing big techno shows into Piranha and Water Street.

Chmiel is also president of the St. Paul Quarter Business Association, which he helped revive a year ago. It recently landed $20,000 in matching funds from the city's Economic Development Zone committee. The club owners are ''working to enhance a district, enhance an entire neighborhood and bring more people down.''

Rob Maher, owner of Red Social Lounge and co-owner of Industry, agrees with Chmiel.

''I see that working out very well -- John has been instrumental in coordinating our efforts.'' Three years ago, ''it was basically me and Tapas,'' says Maher. Even Water Street Music Hall, which has had a history of rowdy clubs, was undergoing one of its city-mandated closures at the time.

''John's done a good job of keeping that open,'' Maher says, ''because it's the only venue of that size here.''

In the quarter, Tapas 177 has done perhaps the most savvy job of identifying its audience: A 30-year-old recruiter for an information technology company is pretty typical. That's Tapas regular Schlosser-Long, who lives in the ''south end'' of Henrietta (''I don't want people to think I live in Marketplace mall.'') She and three girlfriends gathered at the restaurant early on a recent Wednesday night. One was drinking a Citron and tonic, one a Stockholm 75 and two had cosmopolitans, still the most popular martini in Rochester. Tapas 177 has 21 varieties of martinis on its menu.

''It's a very New York sort of place,'' Schlosser-Long says. ''In my business, with so many people coming from out of town, we want people to feel like they're in a big city.''

So what's wrong with a little white lie? The bars are full of 'em. Although she's happily married, Schlosser-Long agrees to size up a typical Tapas crowd, three guys sitting at the end of the bar: ''The bald guy is cruising for chicks,'' she says. ''The middle guy is a businessman. The guy closest is an intellectual.''

All three are also holding cigarettes in a very Euro way, blowing smoke. ''They think they're soooooo trendy,'' Sclosser-Long says. ''But they're soooooo not.''