It’s a clear early autumn night as crowds of revelers make their way down East Avenue to the slew of watering holes and eateries that dot the strip. Before the weekend party begins, each must make a pitstop at a gated barricade, empty their pockets and get frisked by a security officer. People under 21 are banned, and cars can no longer pass down the strip on Saturday nights.
While Mayor Malik Evans touted the district as a remedy for violent crime, some business owners in the district see it as more harm than good. Some are rethinking their long-term business plans. Others are divesting.
Swan Dive, the popular eatery and bar on Alexander Street known for pizza slices and late-night DJs, has called the district home for eight years. It is expected to close at the end of the year, when its lease is up.
Nick Ryan is co-owner of Swan Dive, a part of the Swan Family of Restaurants. He pointed to changing tastes, new nightlife destinations like The Cannery in Fairport and the barricades in place on Saturday nights among the reasons for the restaurant’s planned closure.
Ryan said he is not opposed to the idea of a locked down district, but rather the manner it was implemented.
“If you go down Sixth Street in Austin (Texas) by the University, they have that, and it’s good,” he said. “It makes sense, right? And no one cares about it, because they’re all out for the same thing. They want to be safe; they want to have a good time. I think maybe it was kind of a rash reaction from the city to immediately just be like, ‘there was one more incident,’ and then that just sparked the change immediately.”
The changes to the East End were made in September 2024, after a spate of shootings in the East and Alexander corridor and after meetings between business owners in the district and officials in the Evans administration. The barricaded district was created through Evans’ Gun Violence State of Emergency and did not require approval by Rochester City Council members.
A city spokesperson said there are no immediate plans to change the barricades and that the number of people entering the district has rebounded since its implementation. The city only was able to provide data for the past three months, however, showing an average of 2,300 entries on Saturdays in August, 3,600 in September and 3,700 for the first two weeks of October.
Citing these figures, Mayor Malik Evans said that business in the East End is faring well.
“Not one violent incident there since we have put that into place,” Evans said, during an October appearance on WXXI’s Connections with Evan Dawson. “And the vast majority of businesses are doing extremely well and are extremely successful. We will never sacrifice public safety for entertainment.”
Five businesses have opened in or near the district in the past year, the city noted, including Albunn Coffeehouse, Habibi hookah lounge, Fool’s Gold Saloon, and Lina’s. Also, the music venue Anthology reopened during that stretch.
But some business owners said their meetings with the city have been unable to solve the core issues they see as brought by the barricades.
Over the summer, Beau Warren, owner of the axe throwing bar Axes and Ales, announced the establishment would be closing. He directly blamed the barricades, calling it a “police state.”
“We were asked to have a meeting with the mayor and to put forth all our financials, like how much money we’re losing, which we were happy to do,” Warren said. “The mayor is kind of like, he looks at you, he listens, but he doesn’t hear.”
Warren provided weekly financial records for Axes and Ales between September and December 2022, 23 and ’24 to CITY. Those records show rising revenue in 2023, with October of that year being the best-performing month. Revenue fell by 44% in October 2024 compared to the same month in 2023.
In total, Saturday revenues for Axes and Ales in the latter months of 2024 fell 15% from 2022 and 27% from 2023.
“This is bad,” Warren said. “This is bad for business. This is bad for publicity, for anybody that comes in from out of town, this is not good.”
Just down the street from Axes and Ales, Don Swartz, the former owner of the building that housed Veneto’s Italian Restaurant and Wall Street Bar & Grill, agreed. He sold the building in March. The final straw was the creation of the entertainment district.
“I can tell you this — the mayor should get the key to Fairport,” Swartz said, referring to business he thinks is being driven from the East End to Fairport’s nightlife scene.
Swartz claimed a similar trend as Warren did. Wall Street, the stock market-themed pub on East Avenue, typically averaged 400 to 500 patrons on a Saturday night, he said. It dropped to under 100 after the clampdown. That bar is now closed and has been replaced by Habibi.
“We put (in) about $100,000 and got a liquor license and just saw the writing on the wall,” Swartz said. “People are just avoiding that area like crazy. They don’t want to be frisked. They don’t want to be patted down. They don’t want to have to show papers to just walk down the street.”
Swartz has long been a critic of both the perceived lack of public safety in the East End and, previously, of business closure orders during the COVID-19 pandemic, the latter he described as his “Libertarian streak,” and likened it to the entertainment district.
The major difference, he said, is that he doesn’t think the district has done much to actually address crime to begin with. Those who are law-abiding will still go out but are more likely to be deterred by the barricades and police lights. Those who are up to no good will just move down the street.
“I asked the mayor himself, and the deputy mayor, why don’t we, the next shooting, why don’t we shut that neighborhood down?” Swartz said. “Can you imagine shutting the road down on Jefferson Avenue or Clinton? Can you imagine shutting that road down, saying it’s an emergency, and then patting down every single person walking down that street and forcing them to show papers? Can you imagine the outrage on Clinton Avenue if that happened?”
The city has wielded the Gun Violence State of Emergency to shutter spaces and businesses across the city. Some, like the closing of a makeshift nightclub in a garage on Hollenbeck Street, were deemed as directly contributing to gun violence. Others, like the early closure orders to businesses on North Clinton Avenue on the last day of the Puerto Rican Festival, were meant as pre-emptive measures.
The latter was met with widespread outrage this past summer among the business community on North Clinton.
It’s not entirely clear how much the entertainment district has affected violent crime in the neighborhood. No shootings have occurred within the entertainment district’s boundaries this year, according to Rochester Police Department data. One shooting took place in September on nearby Savannah Street, on a Wednesday.
Last year, prior to the barricades being erected, four shootings took place near the district’s boundaries. One of those occurred during the time the barricades are now erected.
Overall, shootings have dropped precipitously since the pandemic citywide. The most recent figure, at the time of this article’s writing, was 176 between October 18, 2024 and 2025, compared to the peak of 426 between March 4, 2021 and 2022. The recent number is about in line with the annual count of shootings in early 2020, a period when violent crime had already been at a low point.
Prior to the entertainment district’s implementation, serious incidents in the area had trended up, said Michael Desain, commander of RPD’s patrol division. For example, he pointed to the four weapons charges filed against people in the area in 2024, up from one in 2021.
There is a balance to be struck between public safety and meeting the needs of the businesses in the district, he said.
“Our number one job is public safety,” Desain said. “The interest of the bar owners, we weigh those at the same time and try to make it good for all. Why do some bars do well and others do not? I don’t know the answer to that.”
Ryan and Swartz both agreed that one of the core issues feeding moves like the entertainment district, and the increasing unwillingness for people to patronize the establishments in the East End, might not be safety itself, but the perception of safety. It also puts pressure on an industry already facing constant waves of change.
“I think with the area in general, everything shifted after COVID,” Ryan said. “People’s habits have changed. People got older. People had kids. The college bus lines stopped running down there. I think these are major factors of kind of what the area’s evolved into.”
Leave a comment