Bars, dining spots look to rooftops to attract customers
Rooftops are for air conditioners, you say? That is so last year.
With new developments rising and as some proprietors look at their properties with fresh eyes, rooftop spaces around town are coming into their own. They’re being deployed as event spaces, cast as airy bars and restaurants with an atmosphere and view that can’t be matched by a street-level patio.
“It’s just a cool thing,” said Bob Welcher, president of Restaurant Consultants Inc. “People love to be outside. There is an attraction to it.
“Who could blame them?” No one. Developers have gotten the message that rooftops, or at least terrace spaces, are hot.
Projects at 711 N. High St., 800 N. High St., Market Tower, 77 E. Nationwide Blvd., all have bars and restaurants linked to rooftops or upper-floor terraces. The owners of the Smith Bros. Hardware building are adding a dramatic rooftop space. The Huntington Center Downtown may get a terrace on one of its upper floors.
High rises aren’t the only places rooftop projects work.
The Ram Restaurant & Brewery in the Short North has one, as does Novak’s, Callahan’s, The Social and others in the Arena District. Seventh Son Brewing Co. is adding one with its ongoing expansion project. Platform Brewing Co. also added a rooftop patio to its taproom beside Columbus State Community College.
Platform’s co-owner Justin Carson said he was partly attracted to its digs, a former Carfagna’s food plant, because the rooftop was usable and had an unimpeded view of the nearby Downtown.
“When you have a good outdoor space, people want to be there and be a part of it,” Carson said. “It helps the vibe of the space.”
It also is a way to add occupancy without expanding a building's footprint, even if the space isn't available year-round.
“It's cheaper to build up,” Welcher said. “You get more dollars per square foot.”
At the Ram, the secondfloor patio offers a view of the Short North streetscape, and there is an energy to its surroundings. But even in places with little to look at, an elevated dining spot is a draw.
“It is super popular,” said Nohal Alshahal, managing partner of The Crest, of the rooftop patio on its Clintonville restaurant. The rooftop deck was renovated this summer to enlarge the seating capacity. “We realized that a lot more people wanted to use that space.”
The Crest's rooftop doesn't have a dramatic view, but it does give patrons an overhead glimpse at the extensive gardens that the restaurant cultivates for herbs, vegetables and fruits that go into its dishes.
For the Crest, a patio would have eaten up precious parking space, so making use of the rooftop made sense, Alshahal said.
“It utilizes space where there might not be any patio available,” said Dennis Lombardi, principal of Insight Dynamics, a food-service consultant. “Especially in urban locations.”
Other big cities have gobs of rooftop bars and restaurants.
“You go to (Washington, D.C.), you go to New York, you go to Chicago,” said Todd Kemmerer, president of Capitol Equities, which manages the Smith Bros. building. “You see a lot of rooftops.
“Columbus has been a little behind.”
It makes sense, then, that as Columbus becomes more densely developed in popular neighborhoods like the Arena District and the Short North, that rooftops are utilized when possible.
New developments, in which rooftop spaces can be designed into the plans, make the most sense, Lombardi said.
“It's very hard to retrofit a building’s rooftop,” he said. “It's not very common. You are much better off planning for it from the get-go.” Kemmerer agrees.
The Smith Bros. building is nearly a century old, and it needed a lot of work to make the rooftop bar and event space useful. It's been part of Kemmerer's plan for the building for 20 years. Support columns for a rooftop space were installed in 1997.
“Call me a little slow,” he said, “I finally said 'we have to do it.' It's going to be spectacular.”
The Smith Bros. rooftop space, which includes a gin bar called Juniper, remains a work in progress but is on schedule to begin hosting events later this month and opens to the public in October.
The small explosion of rooftop projects tracks with an improving economy and also with new projects.
The 711 building, 77 E. Nationwide Blvd., and 800 N. High St. are all new mid-rise buildings. Ram is also part of a new building. The Short North Food Hall, a project planned by Jeff Corso's group, will heavily retrofit an older building with a large rooftop space.
Kemmerer believes any new building near Downtown is missing a big opportunity if the rooftop goes undeveloped.
There is more to the draw of a rooftop space than height. A view is great, but it's really all about open air, Alshahal said.
“It's an environment that you can't get anywhere else,” she said. “People just really enjoy being outdoors on a rooftop.”