Pattaya, Thailand's rambunctious beach resort, is known throughout the world for its miles of outdoor bars. They keep the town hopping virtually around the clock.
Perhaps it was Pattaya that gave Baltimore investors the idea to do something similar here. As a result, half a dozen proposals have been submitted to the city to construct bars along the Fells Point-Canton waterfront. Equipped with such exotic names as Parrot Island and Piranha Grill, they would add a total of 1,200 bar and restaurant seats to the area's already-considerable supply. Several would have big warm-weather outdoor table areas.
The application of a Malaysian-style restaurant called Craven's Island was recently rejected by the city zoning board. But with a court appeal a distinct possibility, the matter may not be over yet.
The zoning board, by a narrow vote, did the right thing. This kind of bar district was not even remotely envisioned in the 1989 waterfront study which guides development in the Canton area.
The waterfront bar proposals seem to have become a fad for two reasons.
One is the enormous success of Bay Cafe, which uses props like palm trees and steel bands to create a Caribbean atmosphere, and Bohager's, a cavernous warehouse-like structure which is to the bar scene what Home Depot is to home improvement. With its easy access to the Jones Falls Expressway, the latter, in particular, is favored by suburban college kids wanting to taste city life but avoid its many risks.
The other prod behind the bar proposals has been the failure of more substantial developments to materialize in the past several years on vacant shoreline between Fells Point and Canton. Even though a number of ambitious projects have been announced, the economic climate has not been right. Thus, bars could fill the area temporarily until more ambitious ventures become possible.
There is nothing inherently wrong about a waterfront bar-restaurant and the city ought to consider each proposal on its merits. But a huge new concentration of watering holes could postpone or deter altogether more desirable residential and mixed-use development from one of the city's choice stretches of real estate.
Fells Point has had more than its share of problems due to noise, public drunkenness and disorderly behavior. In Fells Point, though, at least the argument can be made that many of the bars preceded residential gentrification.
That argument is largely null and void along the Canton waterfront.