Anchoring the first phase of development will be a country music venue, Toby Keith’s I Love This Bar & Grill.  Downtown locations of Flipside Burgers and a gourmet taco restaurant called Dos Tequilas will follow, plus the northern Italian eatery Lago, which moves from Tremont.

The first phase of the Flats East Bank also includes an office building, hotel, gym and boardwalk.

Wolstein Developers and Fairmount Properties have also unveiled the second phase of the project near Tower City, including a 140-unit apartment complex.

Fairmount Properties’ Randy Ruttenberg says the new neighborhood will be different from the Flats of the 1980s and 1990s, because developers own the entire 23 acres.

“What you had was 30 to 35 individual owners of bars and clubs and restaurants doing their own thing.  In order to be successful, moving forward, we together can create a project which is integrated in terms of the look and feel.  And (that) allowed us to add some important components that weren’t down here originally, which is, of course, the office and residential piece.”

Ruttenberg says most of phase one – which is costing about 275 million dollars -- should be open by next spring, with Toby Keith’s restaurant following in late summer. Developers say the 120 million dollar second phase will create more than 800 construction jobs.