Silver-haired John Morris has been the wag of Pine Avenue since the days when downtown Long Beach had more potential than people.
Back when he dropped anchor on Pine Avenue in 1988, "it was a ghost town," said the owner of Smooths Sports Grille. "I'd serve 20 dinners all weekend." Next door was a brothel.
These days, Pine Avenue -- with its new condos in old buildings, its uptown-meets-small-town mix of L'Opera fine dining and Victor's Shoes for the visiting cruise ship set -- can choke with popularity.
And Morris' bar patio has become something of a salon with buffalo wings -- graced by the California governor after a port talk with the British prime minister and by celebs and legendary drivers such as Bobby Rahal after the annual Grand Prix race.
Two decades of public redevelopment and private investment in downtown Long Beach have finally ripened into a place where thousands of people do, as the marketing slogan goes, "live, work and play."
But all that growth -- 10,000 more residents expected by 2010 and thousands more visitors on weekends -- has caused growing strains. And for many early Pine Avenue settlers such as Morris, a newer waterfront restaurant row closer to the bustling Long Beach Convention Center and Aquarium of the Pacific has forced them to adapt or die.
"Pine Avenue has been evolving for several years," said Suja Lowenthal, whose City Council district includes part of downtown, where she has lived for nine years in the historic Kress Building, the first big downtown conversion. "I think the timing now is perfect, and I am hoping that we as a city can buckle down, to contribute to what the identity there is going to be."
Weekend cruising has persisted in clogging Pine Avenue, Lowenthal said, and the waterfront restaurants of the Pike at Rainbow Harbor a few blocks away have drained some dinner-hour patrons from Pine Avenue north of Ocean Boulevard.
To stay afloat, some businesses remade themselves. Morris converted his original fine-dining restaurant -- Mum's -- into a sports bar with giant-screen TVs. The owner of George's Greek Deli farther up Pine Avenue painted an old bus to resemble a trolley and shuttles patrons of the Pike to his restaurant. Others opened nightclubs such as The Vault 350, which draw a later and noisier crowd.
Over the last year, a downtown stakeholders group of businesses and residents has worked with the city on solutions.
