CLEVELAND, Ohio -- A country-music venue and four restaurants are coming to the Flats East Bank, as the developers of the Cleveland waterfront neighborhood wrap up leasing for the first part of the project and turn their attention to a $120 million second phase.

Toby Keith's I Love This Bar & Grill, which has roughly a dozen locations in several states, will open a 20,000-square-foot nightspot near the Cuyahoga River in late summer or early fall of 2013. Featuring popular and emerging country-music acts, a barbecue menu and a guitar-shaped bar, the bar and grill could fill a gap in Cleveland's live music scene.

Places to live and play represent the next stage of development for a project that started with a $275 million office-and-hotel complex. Construction is well under way on the first phase of the Flats East Bank, where an 18-story office building, a 150-room Aloft hotel and a riverfront boardwalk are slated to open next spring. If the Wolstein Group and Fairmount Properties can tie together private and public money, those buildings will be joined by riverfront apartments and entertainment venues.

The first phase includes four restaurants, along West 10th Street. Well-known Akron-area restaurateur Ken Stewart has signed a lease to open a steak and seafood restaurant bearing his name. Ken Stewart's will be joined by a Flip Side burger joint and a gourmet taco restaurant called Dos Tequilas. Lago, a popular Tremont eatery, is moving to the Flats and expanding its catering business to serve the hotel and conference facilities.

On Thursday, the developers unveiled their plans for $120 million in additional development, including the Toby Keith-themed venue and a 140-unit apartment complex. A rendering shows an apartment building that gently scallops along the riverfront, with retail on the ground floor and parking tucked underneath. Phase two, which would include other restaurants and nightclubs, might be under construction by late summer and finished by fall of 2013.

The 23-acre Flats East Bank site has room for millions of square feet of waterfront buildings, including hundreds more apartments. But the developers, who fought to keep their 3-acre office-and-hotel plan alive during a brutal recession, are tackling bite-sized pieces. To make the apartment plan work - and offer competitive rental rates despite the high cost of new construction - the second phase is sure to involve a blend of public and private financing.

"My team has battled through a major economic crisis and pulled off what many had said was impossible," Scott Wolstein, who is working with his mother, Iris, on the project, said in a written statement. "We here in Cleveland were among the first in the country to secure financing and begin construction on a major commercial development following the economic collapse."

In an interview, Wolstein said that public financing will be "a significant component of the capital stack." He would not say how much money the developers are seeking from the city of Cleveland and Cuyahoga County. Both governments have flagged downtown development and the lakefront as priorities, and both put money into the first phase of the Flats East Bank. Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson and Cuyahoga County Executive Ed FitzGerald expressed support for the project this week.

"All we need is for the public to reinvest a portion of their proceeds from this project back into the project," Wolstein said, referring to increased tax revenues from employment, construction and new businesses on the site. "We're not asking for a gift. . . . This isn't money that exists today, and it won't exist unless we can go forward with this project."

The developers estimated that building the second phase will create more than 800 construction-related jobs and $4 million in tax revenues. After completion, they said, the apartments, retail and entertainment venues will support more than 600 jobs and produce more than $1 million in annual income tax revenue for the city.

"It is extremely gratifying to realize our family's dream for Cleveland's Flats area," Iris Wolstein said in a written statement.

Adding apartments is not a surprise. Housing has always been part of the Flats East Bank plan, and occupancy at downtown apartments approached 96 percent late last year, according to data compiled by the Downtown Cleveland Alliance. Singer-songwriter Toby Keith's venue, on the other hand, is both a nod to the area's heyday as an entertainment district and a bet that there's untapped local demand for live country music.

Based on strong radio ratings and large summer crowds at Blossom Music Center in Cuyahoga Falls, that's probably true, said Keith Abrams, operations manager for Clear Channel Cleveland, which includes WGAR FM/99.5. "Nashville's in a really good spot right now, and Cleveland could benefit from that," he said.

But there aren't many country-focused bars or clubs in the Cleveland area, Abrams noted. And smaller country bands often struggle to get bookings.

Thirsty Cowboys, a large country-music venue in Medina, attracts 500 to 600 people on weekend nights, for line dancing and live bands. Some patrons make a trip down from Cleveland, but most of them hail from Ashland, Akron, Medina and Wooster, said manager Aaron Lind.

"I'm not sure how it would do up there, but we're doing great out here," he said of the country music scene.

"Up there," Lind added, "it's a totally different world."

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