City's restaurant attraction program serving up nothing at all

Almost five years ago, the city established a fund to lure sit-down restaurants downtown.
Officials hailed the prospect of creating “a restaurant row” downtown and vowed to lure high quality, sit-down eateries that would be open for dinner at least six nights a week.
Through a $60,000 annual payment to the Greater Bristol Chamber of Commerce, taxpayers hired Dawn Leger to lead the program as downtown coordinator, she moved on after three years without success.
Only once did the city come close to nabbing something – when Vita’s got the green light for $60,000 to open on Main Street. But that deal collapsed when The Bristol Press exposed the owner’s financial problems.
The city also dug into the fund to give the former Centre Mall Pizza $60,000 so it could move out of the mall to the opposite side of North Main Street, a move that officials readily admitted had nothing to do with the aim of the restaurant program.
So despite all the effort and money, said BDA commissioner Mike Rivers, “there are zero” restaurants that have been attracted.
Jonathan Rosenthal, the city’s economic development director, remains optimistic.
He said he doesn’t want to dip into the funds for anything less than restaurants someone might seek out for a Valentine’s Day dinner.
“I wouldn’t take away from the white tablecloth fund,” Rosenthal said.
He said the idea is to have restaurants that can seat up to 60 people indoors with a full-service menu, places that are “high quality and unique.”
Rosenthal said that when the program began, officials have six or seven possible locations in mind for new restaurants. Many of them are gone now, including the basement of developer George Carpenter’s office building at the corner of North Main and Center streets. Carpenter didn’t want to put in the required ventilation there, Rosenthal said.
But with activity likely on the 17-acre mall site in the next couple of years, officials are content to keep waiting.
They said that sooner or later, restaurants will discover downtown Bristol.

Update:
Dawn Leger sent this along:
"I never made $60,000 in that job; far from it. The Chamber was paid $60,00 by the City, but my salary - at its highest point - was $45,000.
We had many very interested and well-known restaurants looking at properties in Bristol, as Jonathan mentioned, but the program was presented too early for anyone to bite, and most of the sites vanished within the first year of the promotion.
Maybe someday, it will come."
Thanks for the clarification, Dawn!

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Contact Steve Collins at scollins@bristolpress.com