Tri-State business owner hopeful downtown Evansville district will thrive

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EVANSVILLE, IN (WFIE) - One Tri-State business is seeing less traffic and less "life" in the downtown Evansville district.

The owner of The Uptown Event Restaurant is hopeful it will soon thrive again.

Uptown owner Stephen Fritz has ideas on how to bring renewed life downtown.

Fritz says business is booming at his restaurant on Main Street when there's a game at the Ford Center or an attraction at the Old National Events Plaza.

It's all the down time in between that hurts.

Fritz says he'd like to see city leaders and developers pay even more attention to Main Street.

When that happens, Fritz believes the downtown district and the entire city will flourish.

But right now, he says, it feels like most people don't even know what the district has to offer.

"We have a baby grand piano where we can have a musician come in and play, we can set up some hors d'oeuvres and a cocktail waitress in place and invite the people that work downtown, the lawyers and judges and people of the city to come down and talk shop after work or just to hang out," said Fritz.

"We grow our area from the core, you take the historical downtown area and you enrich it. Once it's been enriched, then these other things blossom out."

Kelly Coures with the Evansville Department of Metropolitan Development says the IU Med School and Convention Hotel will bring business to Main Street and the downtown district.

He also says, in the next few weeks, some big news will be announced around the old Greyhound bus station that he believes should drive people to this area as well.