Pizza Arcades and Places to Live: Your Corktown Dreams

Last week, we put out a feeler for what you might want to open up in the burgeoning food-lover's paradise that is Corktown. Stories of rapidly approaching development phases and expanding restaurant micro-empires by the men and women who already own popular places in the city's oldest neighborhood led us to wonder: what does the average restaurant-goer want to see, and where does he or she want to eat?

The incredibly non-scientific-and-entirely-too-small sample results reveal that you all have strong opinions on this issue. Some of you long for a chop house akin to the city's high-end, high-quality chop houses like Michael Symon's Roast in the Westin Book Cadillac downtown. Others wish current restaurants in the area would allow for rooftop drinking access, along with rapid redevelopment of old empty buildings like the CPA Building and the old Book Repository.

There were calls for casual dining that isn't also inside of a bar (might we suggest Brooklyn Street Local?), and a small longing for a pizza place that is also an arcade, where you can drink beer, eat pizza and play old-school video games. (Attention local business developers: if you develop this restaurant concept in Corktown or anywhere in the city, people will come by the hordes to your establishment. We just have a hunch. We're not biased toward this idea, or anything).

Beyond restaurants, there were also many, many pleas for new apartments or lofts, renovated public spaces and even a "Keep Corktown Clean" organization, which sounds terribly nice. But there's always room for more ideas. As development continues in Corktown (the old Tigers Stadium site, the elusive CPA Building, Gold Cash Gold, and much, much more), we'll keep our eyes peeled for pizza beer arcades and neighborhood improvement organizations. But really: Pizza. Arcade. Bar. Rinse and repeat.