Developers Plan Disaster-themed Bar On Key Highway

"Crash Cafe" Would Simulate Airplane Crash

By Mark J. Adams

A group of Baltimore businessmen are planning to build a disaster-themed bar and restaurant, dubbed the "Crash Cafe," on a vacant lot at 1220 Key Highway. If approved, the bar would sit directly across from the Harborview tower, next to a proposed nursing home.

According to an application filed with the liquor board, developers Patrick Turner, Glenn Charlow and Scott Robinson want to construct a building that would simulate the site of an airplane crash. A color promotional brochure filed with their application says that the building will have the "tail end of a huge DC-3 protruding from it's (sic) front wall, smoke pouring from it's (sic) tom hull, roof tilted from the recent impact." After entering the bar through the tom fuselage of the airplane, patrons would be treated to the sight of "a motorcycle ... smashed into one of the crooked crannies in the wall. Glass from the explosion tears through them, affording you a fuzzy glimpse of what's to come inside."

The entrance will contain a glass topped tapas bar, which serves Spanish style appetizers priced from $1 to $4. Above the tapas bar, screens will show videotapes of "crashes, implosions, spectacular stunts, and staged train wrecks, and more...... The actual restaurant would have a 108 seats in a dining room and an unspecified number of seats in private rooms.

The developers say their venture will be the first theme restaurant to be based on what they describe as a "human fascination with crashes, collision and other forms of excitement." Their application goes on to say that "some may say that it teeters on the verge of the unacceptable- but that is precisely its strength."

The application drew an immediate protest from State Senator George Della (D, 47th). In a terse letter to the liquor board, Della noted his opposition and asked that community groups from the South Baltimore peninsula be given written notice of any hearings set on the proposal. The board will consider the application on October 2.

Della lives in the nearby Federal Hill community and has been a participant in the Key Highway Task Force, a planning group formed this year by South Baltimore community leaders to consider the rapid changes proposed for the south side of the harbor. During the past year two new bars opened on Key Highway, drawing immediate complaints from neighbors about rowdiness and scarcity of parking. The zoning board last month postponed consideration of one of the bars' request for a zoning variance.

The lead developer in the Crash Cafe team is Turner, a longtime fixture in the South Baltimore area. If the South Baltimore venture is successful, his group plans to try the disaster-themed concept in other markets.

Turner has developed Henrietta Square, a mixed-use project at Charles and Henrietta Streets. He has owned various bars and restaurants, including Alley Oops, Stall 1043, and Lush's. Most recently, he was embroiled in bitter controversy over his proposal to convert Little Italy's Bagby furniture building into an apartment building containing subsidized housing units. After months of community opposition, the State withdrew its financial support from the project. Turner sued the protesting community organizations and two individual residents of Little Italy and was rebuffed by the Court of Special Appeals. At present, he plans to sell the Bagby building to a development group that will create offices for an advertising agency.