Crosland isn’t done listening to neighborhood concerns, though. He and his vice president, Mick Rossley, attend every meeting of the Cedar Springs Merchants Association. They continue to meet regularly with Oak Lawn leaders like Gregg Kilhoffer, the godfather of Cedar Springs gay bars and president of Caven Enterprises, and Michael Milliken, president of the Oak Lawn Committee. Kilhoffer and the committee have given ilume their blessing. Crosland and his team even hang out at the restaurants and bars along Cedar Springs to gather street-level intel. “If we don’t have the neighborhood’s support,” Crosland says, “it doesn’t matter how perfect we make this.”
Weinberger says she’s already starting to see an evolution in her own Perry Heights neighborhood. Blocks once almost exclusively gay or lesbian are being peppered with professional, straight, married people. Kids have started playing in the yards.
Scott Whittall, co-owner of the Buli Cafe, Bakery & Bistro and president of the Cedar Springs Merchants Association, says he’s seen the gay-to-straight cycle time and again. But this time around, he doesn’t expect it to continue. For him, the “Will Cedar Springs lose its gay identity?” question misses the point. That is: more and more, younger gays and younger straights don’t care about their neighbor’s sexuality.
“Up and down the street, we have younger employees who are straight who have gay friends, and we see customers of all stripes,” he says over a turkey panini that his restaurant serves in kitschy, cool metal lunch boxes. (I got Spider-Man instead of High School Musical, so I’m happy.)
“You go out on Knox-Henderson—we keep up with the competition, and they are it—and you’re just as likely to see two men or two women holding hands, and no one gives them a second look,” Whittall says. “I don’t think you’re going to see here the gay community moving around like it did in New York, from the lower Village to the upper Village and all around and back. I think it’s like gay marriage. In 20 years, people will wonder what the fuss was all about in the first place.”
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