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FAB Ride
By Karl Henkel
YOUNGSTOWN
New restaurants and businesses have crept again into the spotlight of downtown Youngstown.
Ultimately, the success of those businesses will dictate the success of the city’s core.
But what dictates the success of those businesses?
The answer could lie within a Dodge Caravan or a Chrysler Town & Country.
Those two vehicles — owned by FAB CAB, a new division of FAB Limosines and FAB Tours and Travel — transport residents and visitors throughout the Mahoning Valley.
The transportation business, owned by Austintown residents Mark and Kim Bagnoli, recently expanded from its regular bus-and-limo rides to a more modest, casual transit — cabs.
Right now the cabs make about four or five runs on the average night; Bagnoli said he’d like to get up to nearly 50.
The cabs cost $3 per pickup and $2 per mile. (That’s per group, not per person, so a group of four traveling from downtown Youngstown to Boardman would cost $3.75 per person.)
He points to the success of Quaker Cab, a Salem-area cab service, which averages a similar number of runs on a nightly basis.
“If they can do it down there, we should be able to do it up here,” he said.
Downtown businesses say they’d embrace a heavier cab presence.
“It will help tremendously,” said Ed Moses, a partner at V2 Wine Bar Trattoria, which opened downtown earlier this fall. “People don’t want to drink and drive.”
Moses said that restaurant staff has even driven some customers home because there isn’t a stable cab service to transport those who have consumed alcohol back to their suburban homes.
“There needs to be a bigger presence,” he said. “They need to be downtown more often.”
Phil Kidd, community organizer for the Mahoning Valley Organizing Collaborative, said that the timing of the new cab service coincides nicely with downtown’s rebirth.
“It’s timely that an option like that is coming into play now,” he said. “We’re only going to see continued growth downtown.”
The problem — much like the downtown resurgence — is just getting off the ground.
“We’ve seen a really big increase in demand for the cab,” said Bagnoli, noting the word-of-mouth publicity. “What’s hard right now is getting started. People don’t know the cabs are out there.”
Another issue, Bagnoli says, is the perception of cab drivers — speedy, and to an extent, a bit shady.
It’s even a problem here in the Valley, where regular cab service is few and far between.
“No,” said Valley resident April Hernandez, when asked if she’d take a cab. “Those cab drivers are crazy.”
Bagnoli is trying to shatter that stigma through the use of six-seat minivans, brightly decorated with the logos of the dealerships from which they came and topped with a large “FAB CAB” sign.
“These are nice, clean vehicles,” he said.
Bagnoli is banking on the younger Youngstown crowd, but in the meantime, he and his wife, co-owner Kim Bagnoli, have found other ways to promote and use the cab service, most notably with all of the out-of-towners from the natural- gas and oil industry.
“If we keep getting business growth with V&M [Star] and Chesapeake [Energy Corp.] and out-of-town people, it will really help,” he said.
“Youngstown is coming to life. We have to help people get downtown without making them pay outrageous costs.”