By Brendan McLaughlin
There's nothing unusual or mysterious about a restaurant going out of business. About one in four new restaurants fail in the first year. But in a city like Tampa, with such a dearth of quality, independently owned eateries, the failure of Big City Tavern in Centro Ybor is a real loss.
Big City Tavern actually beat the odds staying open for over seven years. The location, in the original ballroom of the historic Centro Espanol was one of the most dramatic and beautiful in the Bay Area. The food, in my experience, was above par. So what went wrong, beyond the owner's obvious inability to put enough butts in the seats?
Three days after shutting down his dream, Brian Cornacchia sounded tired, but upbeat- like a boxer who lost the fight but gave it his best shot. Cornacchia praises his staff. He says his landlord, M & J Wilcow couldn't have been more supportive. He claims his bar and catering business were very successful. If there was a medical examiner's report to identify the cause of death, it might read: Financial asphyxiation due to repeated news accounts of beatings, stabbings, and shootings in Ybor City.
Cornacchia believes the negative associations people make with Ybor City were his undoing. "'Dirty, dangerous, tattoos, kids.' Those are the words people think of when you say, Ybor City. It's never 'classy, historic, artistic.'" I asked him if that was just perception or reality. He believes the problems are real and complained that when people dine at Sideberns in South Tampa, they've got lots of places to go and things to do after dinner. His clientelle, he says, just isn't interested in the loud and sometimes rowdy clubs and street scene.
In 2004, Cornacchia tried to get the City to pass an ordinance that would raise the age requirement for admission into district's clubs from 18 to 21. That effort failed along with his restaurant. "I did everything humanly possible to make this a success. The one thing I couldn't change was Ybor."
From my vantage point as a journalist and an Ybor neighbor I see the failure of Big City as both dire and undeserved. If Big City was located almost anywhere else, it would have become a Florida landmark. But it was exactly where it belonged. Ybor does have a crime problem. So does San Francisco. Welcome to the world. I visit Ybor regularly- day and night, often with my wife and even my kids. Its shabby originality has always been part of the fun. I can only hope that another class operator will take over that magnificent space and spend a little more on advertizing.
((Wayne Garcia at Political Whore expands on this theme here))
(Photo Credit goes to the St. Petersburg Times. Read their article on Big City Tavern's struggles here)