Cascade Center at the Riverplex offers big-city elegant ambience

By Jeanne Starmack

New Castle’s downtown revitalization has included new store facades, parking and streetlights.

NEW CASTLE, Pa. — In the Mill Street Grille at the Cascade Center at the Riverplex, patrons dined in the front room while in the back, friends gathered for drinks around the bar.

It was a good-sized crowd for a Wednesday night — one you might expect to find in Pittsburgh, not in downtown New Castle.

But New Castle is changing, and the Mill Street Grille, with its elegant ambiance that includes a dining room overlooking the Shenango River, is just one sign of what developers hope is in store for the city.

The upscale restaurant, which opened in 2006, is one of three entertainment and dining establishments now in the Cascade Center. The other two are Stage 3, a comedy club which opened in August, and the Basin, which opened in June. It doubles as a casual-dining restaurant during the weekdays and a nightclub on weekends.

The center, developed and managed by New Castle natives Peter Medure, Tom George and Bob Bruce, also includes retail spaces for rent.

Think the mall at Station Square in Pittsburgh on a smaller scale, and you’ll have some idea of what it’s like in the remodeled, cavernous, 75,000-square-foot center that includes two vintage buildings and a new addition.

Think the Station Square complex in Pittsburgh or the Flats in Cleveland, and you’ll understand the concept of the Riverplex, a destination area the partnership is trying to establish near the river. The partners are hoping that eventually, it will be the place to come for entertainment and shopping.

They expect not only to attract western Pennsylvanians, but people from Ohio as well. As many as a quarter of the Mill Street Grille’s regular customers, Medure estimated last week, are from Boardman and Canfield.

“If you live in Boardman, Youngstown or Canfield, we’re closer than Pittsburgh,” he said. “And if we have high-quality food and ambiance, why go to Pittsburgh?”

A faithful Mill Street Grille regular who was enjoying cocktails at the bar Wednesday evening agreed. Kathy Foreman, who lives in Mount Jackson with her architect husband, Jeff, said the restaurant or the Basin are great places to come to enjoy some socializing after work.

The center’s beauty and elegance, including a central atrium with a spiral staircase and balconies that overlook the river, appeal to them, she said.

“We’re here at least three times a week,” said Foreman, who also appreciates that the center is five minutes from their home.

Natalie Sheely, who moved to New Castle from Columbus three months ago and works for Foreman’s husband, said she likes the convenience.

“Columbus is very urban, but the downside is you always have to drive so far,” said Sheely, who added that she grew up in Germany in a town about the size of New Castle. “In Columbus, you feel a little lost,” she said. “There’s more of a connection here.”

Sheely said she plans to check out the Basin “as soon as I get a baby sitter” for her son, Liam, 1, and daughter, Lilly, 4.

She doesn’t know the menu at the Mill Street Grille all that well yet, she said, “but I can always go for a nice, juicy steak.”

The restaurant offers steaks, chops, seafood and pasta. Downstairs, its more casual sister, the Basin, offers food such as pizza and wings.

Stage 3 will eventually be open six days a week. Open on weekends now, it’s not only a comedy club, but a stage for open mikes, karaoke, local bands and more. Comedians who have performed there, Medure said, are regional and national acts. The name of the club is a tribute, he said, to one of the old buildings’ roots as the first Warner Bros. movie theater. It refers to a stage that was being built for vaudeville acts before the brothers moved out and went to New York, where film was less expensive.

Medure said that New Castle doesn’t always get the best publicity, but people should realize a downtown revitalization has included new store facades, streetlights and parking — beautification efforts from local businesses and developers and local and state governments.

He and his partners believe the entertainment and dining will draw people, who will in turn draw retailers to Cascade Center.

“The whole idea is that if people come, it makes it easier for other risk-takers to come in,” he said.

Medure acknowledged that the country’s present economic crisis “is very frightening to our industry.” He said entertainment is the first thing to go when people don’t have the discretionary income they once had.

But he also believes that people will seek out entertainment spots closer to home. “They’ll say, ‘Here’s a great spot you don’t have to fly to.’”