Downtown Survivor

Downtown Survivor

Raimond Aulen's bar in downtown Fort Myers has survived bad city ordinances, years of street repairs and now an

economic slump. It doesn't inspire investor confidence.

Anyone thinking about opening a business in downtown Fort Myers should have a chat with Raimond Aulen.

Aulen is the owner of the Indigo Room, one of the few survivors in an area forgotten by businesses and residents that moved to the suburbs. For years, the city has tried to revitalize the area with all sorts of plans for entertainment, shops and condos. During the real estate boom, it looked like downtown would finally reawaken after decades of neglect. But the condo bust quickly put an end to that.

Aulen says the area could have taken off if it hadn't been for one fateful decision by the city council eight years ago: They banned anyone under 21 from entering bars such as Indigo Room.

When Aulen opened Indigo in late 1995, young people flocked downtown. "It was awesome," Aulen recalls. "Within a short time we had a line out the door and down the street."

It was just the kind of revitalization the city needed. Promoting the area as an entertainment district had been a successful strategy to revive struggling downtowns across the country, and Fort Myers was no exception.

Then, the city banned anyone under 21 from bars and Aulen says it immediately cut 30% of the traffic downtown. "It was a weird, eerie feeling, like aliens had snatched a big part of the population," he says. "People started looking for other places to go."

Years of promoting downtown as an entertainment destination in the 1990s were destroyed by that one government act, Aulen says. It's a shame, because things started out so well.

Aulen, 45, is a licensed contractor and plays rock-n-roll guitar. For years, he played in Fort Myers Beach. But it was far from home and he thought there should be a music venue in Fort Myers. When the city started promoting the area as an entertainment district, Aulen looked to rent some space. When no one wanted to rent him space for a bar, he bought a 24,000-square-foot building for $250,000. "Nobody wanted it then," Aulen says. "It had cracks in the wall you could put your hand through."

But Aulen fixed it up and brought it up to code. "I never wanted to own a bar, but the music thing sent me in that direction." Aulen doesn't drink or smoke, but he learned the business by watching others. "I'm the sober guy who watches how the bar operates," he chuckles.

When it opened in 1995, the Indigo Room drew some of the top local, regional and national rock bands. But the neighbors started to complain and some of them had connections at City Hall. One day, a team of 10 code enforcement officials with clipboards swarmed Aulen's business. "They were trying to put me out of business," Aulen says. "I wasn't about to let that happen."

Although the city verbally encouraged entertainment businesses to establish downtown, they never provided the necessary police and trash services. "There were people everywhere," Aulen recalls. "It's the same thing after a ball game."

Neighbors complained about trash and street brawls to the City Council and by 2000 they killed the entertainment district with their under-21 age ban. Instead, they shifted strategy to draw more retail and condos. "You're never going to have retail down here," Aulen says. As it turns out, speculators bought many of the condos and never had any intention of living in them. Meanwhile, a multi-year street beautification project closed entire blocks, choking small shops.

The latest marketing effort by the city to rename downtown the "River District" has been a bust, Aulen says. "What does it mean to somebody? Do we get on a boat when we get there?" he asks. "Did they bring business? No."

These changes in strategy have scared off potential investors. Because investors don't know what the government is going to do, Aulen says it's like "waterfront real estate in Guatemala." Investors "leave skid marks after talking to locals," he says. "We're not chess pieces on a game. Our livelihood is at stake."

But Aulen says there's hope. He recently won the coveted Southwest Florida Blue Chip Community Business Award at a luncheon attended by hundreds of business executives invited by sponsor and insurance brokerage Oswald Trippe and Company. "The city's learning a lesson. Enough people are talking and they're realizing they made some mistakes," Aulen says.

A new group of people on the Fort Myers City Council may bring change and perhaps a reversal of the under-21 bar ordinance. "They need to support us," Aulen says.

-Jean Gruss