Police raids, oversaturation change Marshall Street bar scene over the years

On the night Syracuse University won the 2003 national basketball championship, Marshall Street flooded with students. Meredith Tornabene, a Class of 2005 alumna, remembers wall‐to‐wall people, as well as students getting naked, flipping cars and lighting shirts on fire.

“It was never‐ending choruses of ‘Let’s go Orange,’” she said. “It was so interesting because everyone knew (Marshall Street) was where to go.”

Dirk Oudermool recalls the ceiling being torn down inside of Darwin’s Restaurant and Bar that night. In 2006, Oudermool, the bar’s owner, announced that Darwin’s had closed after failing to renew its lease on Marshall Street.

Along with Konrad’s Sports Bar and Maggie’s Tavern, Darwin’s is among several bars that have closed on Marshall Street. Bars in this area started to decline after the Syracuse Police Department began Operation Prevent in the early 2000s to cut down on underage drinking.

The program, a collaboration between state police, city police and SU’s Department of Public Safety, led a series of raids on bars that resulted in heavy fines and hundreds of citations for underage drinking.

While Tornabene was never part of a raid, she knew peers who were. She said that nothing had been done before to stop the underage drinking.

“(The police) walked in, locked doors and just checked IDs,” she said. “These places had rules, but they were breaking them to make money.”

Wen Xin | Contributing Photographer

Tornabene said there were many rumors surrounding the closing of Konrad’s, but most people said they had been breaking these rules. That did not make regulars feel better, though.

“That was a sad day,” she said. “People left flowers on Marshall Street. People got very upset.”

Tornabene said that time period contributed to the end of the bar scene on Marshall Street. Jerry Dellas, president of Crouse‐Marshall Business Association, said something similar.

“Nobody wants to come up and open up a bar on campus anymore,” Dellas said. “If they do, they’re gonna have a tough time.”

Dellas said there were eight or nine bars in the area around Marshall Street in the 1990s. Now there are five — Faegan’s Cafe & Pub, Orange Crate Brewing Co., DJ’s on the Hill, Chuck’s Cafe and Harry’s Bar.

Konrad’s, which operated from 2000 to 2004, and Maggie’s Tavern, which operated from 1992 to 2009, were both closed due to raids. The New York State Liquor Authority suspended both establishments’ liquor licenses.

While Darwin’s did not close because of Operation Prevent directly, Oudermool said the changing attitude toward bars and alcohol on the Hill were important factors in his decision to not sign a long‐term lease.

“I think, in retrospect, I’m glad today that I got out because the environment on the Hill today has gone more and more against bars and restaurants,” Oudermool said. “And I believe today most of them up there are struggling, and it’s too bad.”

The most recent Operation Prevent raid in the university area occurred on March 20, 2015. Both DJ’s and Orange Crate were investigated, as well as Clinton Street Pub in downtown Syracuse. But only six arrests occurred, and six fake IDs were confiscated across all three establishments, according to a Feb. 2 Syracuse.com article.

The number of fake IDs confiscated by these raids used to be much higher. In October 2007, raids on Lucy’s Retired Surfers Bar, which is now Orange Crate, and Chuck’s resulted in almost 100 tickets for underage drinking. Officers confiscated 53 fake IDs from a raid on Maggie’s Tavern in April 2009.

Jack Keller, who served as co‐chair of the Syracuse Area College Community Coalition from 2001 to 2003, said Operation Prevent taught bars to be more careful when training employees to check IDs at both the bar and door. The coalition worked with Operation Prevent in an effort to address underage drinking.

He said both the coalition and Operation Prevent were effective in discouraging underage drinking.

In addition to the raids, Oudermool said drinking at bars is just not as popular as it used to be. Now, he said, people want to drink at home, which is hard on some businesses.

Wen Xin | Contributing Photographer

“Today, those that are in the restaurant business must be focused on food, and food is very difficult to make a profit on so the whole industry has changed,” Oudermool said. “I would not even consider going into a business similar to what Darwin’s was. It’s passé, it’s gone.”

Dellas, who is also a co‐owner of Faegan’s and Varsity Pizza, said Faegan’s liquor sales used to be its main source of profit, but now business is 75 to 80 percent food sales.

He said that many of the old bars could not keep up sales because they did not offer food. Having four or five bars in the area is more feasible, Dellas said.

“I don’t think it’ll be smart to have any more bars come up there because they all fight for the same business,” he said.

While the trends were overwhelmingly against keeping the bar open, Oudermool said the decision was still difficult.

“It was not an easy thing to walk away from because of the fond memories that we had and the wonderful, young people that we met, but it was time to move on and we did,” he said.