Sitting in front of a stainless-steel bar, young Toledo professional Brett Taylor leaned back in his chair, with a drink in front of him and a bare brick wall to his back.

International artist George Hughes, whose work adorned the walls at the upscale restaurant Diva, had moved his collection the day before. Another artist's work was on its way to the North Huron Street restaurant that doubles as an art gallery.

It was an unlikely scene five years ago in downtown Toledo - a fine dining restaurant lining up artists in what has become a growing social scene populated by the kind of people the city is desperate to attract.

People like Mr. Taylor, a 27-year-old who sees downtown growing. It's where he spends some of his free nights and discretionary income.

"Look at it now: We walk a block or two from here, and we'll see people walking downtown. You would not have seen that three years ago," he said on a recent summer night to Charles Lindberg, also a native, who moved back from Austin, Texas, last year to manage the restaurant.

They represent what Toledo leaders like Mayor Carty Finkbeiner and others believe a growing social scene downtown needs - young people who are educated and have decent incomes. Hang around downtown in the evening and it appears a reverse brain drain is gradually under way - although the evidence is purely anecdotal - and it's fueling a downtown renaissance of urban living and entertainment at the same time as big employers like Owens-Illinois Inc. abandon the area.

"It takes one generation of people staying here," Mr. Taylor said.

"Those middle-class families that pay $100 a year to be a member of the art museum - that builds a city.

"The problem is that people don't know it."

It's difficult to track just how many more people are going downtown to spend their money on live music and food. But just stand around at lunch or a weekend night, or check out the long lines of people waiting to get into one of the dance clubs, and the increase in foot traffic is clear compared to the recent past.

"Downtown Toledo has a ways to go as a downtown dining destination, but we're a heck of a lot better off than we were six years ago," said Rob Horvath, chief operating officer of Tony Packo's, which opened a restaurant across the street from Fifth Third Field this year.

"Now people can put their minds on places to go downtown. Six years ago, beyond Georgio's and maybe Spaghetti Warehouse - I think those were the only two places people could put their minds on to go in downtown Toledo."

Tom Crothers, executive director of the Downtown Toledo Improvement District, said the improvements caught some people by surprise, and now his organization is working to capitalize on the momentum.

"Golly, we just looked around and all of a sudden we realized there are some things going on down here," he said.

Throw in the promise of a downtown arena on Superior Street adjacent to the SeaGate Convention Centre and the various condominiums and residences that are popping up, and it's obvious something is going on compared to a few years ago.

There are some figures to back it up: In 2000, as the country's economy stalled, 1,107 businesses were in downtown Toledo, according to Dun & Bradstreet Inc.

By 2003, with the country in full recession, the number fell to 1,071. This year, the figure is up to 1,275 - a 19 percent increase.

A New Jersey consulting firm in 2004 concluded that downtown Toledo could absorb 293 new housing units a year.

The study, from Zimmerman/Volk Associates Inc., estimated that about half of the residents moving downtown would be younger singles and couples, and nearly 40 percent would be empty-nesters and retirees, with only about 10 percent traditional and nontraditional families.

Since then, Bartley Lofts at Washington and Ontario streets opened with 52 units and is about half full with a mix of young professionals, retirees, and families. Several empty warehouses and plots of land in the heart of downtown and adjoining areas have been purchased and are being transformed into downtown homes like the ones bought by Swan Creek Candles owner Ann Albright.

She wants to move her business's distribution center to the corner of Lafayette and South Superior streets in the Warehouse District, where she would renovate one of the structures as her home, she said.

"We decided to go ahead and open a distribution center just for our stores; we have seven stores, including the Internet. The building was available, and downtown Toledo was central. We're waiting for zoning approval," she said.

"I'm going to do a loft apartment for myself. I fell in love with Toledo. I want to live downtown. Just the energy, especially when the [Mud Hens] games are going on."

The U.S. Census Bureau has not tracked population growth from 2000 to the present in downtown Toledo, which can be roughly defined as the area from Cherry Street west along the Maumee River to the Warehouse District and Fifth Third Field and then north to the Old West End neighborhood.

The Docks restaurant complex on the eastern shore of the Maumee is generally counted as part of downtown because it is part of the ambience and is accessible from Promenade Park by water taxi and from downtown by the Martin Luther King, Jr., Bridge, said Toledo visitor's bureau chief Jim Donnelly, who gets paid to boast about Toledo and its downtown.

The downtown district, including adjoining scenes in the Warehouse District and the Adams Street corridor, appears to be shedding its empty, dangerous image, Mr. Donnelly said. The Jehovah's Witness conventions this year brought in about 7,000 visitors a weekend.

Other organizations are increasingly choosing downtown Toledo for their conventions, and they're giving mostly positive, but some mixed reviews, he said.

"We don't hear that at all anymore [about safety]," Mr. Donnelly said.

"The drawback that we hear most often is that there's a lack of retail shopping. We particularly hear that from convention groups. Retail's not open on the weekends."

What is open are bars and restaurants, and the Docks restaurant complex across the river.

"You have Pub St. George [on Adams Street]. You still have Easy Street Cafe [on Washington Street], Mutts, and Maumee Bay [at Oliver and Broadway]. You can still go on Thursdays and hear great jazz at Murphy's [on Summit Street]," Mr. Taylor said. "You have options now."

Perhaps the biggest booster to the area's image is Fifth Third Field, where the beloved Mud Hens have increased the district's profile and number of downtown visitors for its 80 home games a year.

But downtown, as a year-round social scene, has been making a pub-crawl toward relevance, helped by restaurants such as Jackson's, Diva, Frickers, and Tony Packo's that have opened over the past six years.

Mr. Horvath said Packo's opened its restaurant at 7 South Superior St. principally to take advantage of the increased business from the Mud Hens and to grab the lunch crowd.

He said that so far the restaurant has been "very successful," but the test will be how well it does in the winter and on weeknights.

"Our soft spot is going to be Monday through Thursday night times. It's going to take time to develop that because downtown isn't thought of as a destination Monday through Thursday, and we're going to have to develop that," he said.

In an effort to boost downtown business, an event organized by Downtown Toledo Inc. is scheduled to start on the first Friday in November to attract people to a half-dozen downtown restaurants.

Mr. Crothers said visitors to downtown will be able to park at one of six restaurants - Diva, Manhattan's, Manos, Tony Packo's, Jackson's, and The Blarney, which is a new restaurant scheduled to open on Monroe Street - and take a trolley from one to the other between 5 and 9 p.m.

Each restaurant will have live music and drink specials, in addition to their regular menus, he said.

The first of the "First Friday Pub Crawls" is set for Nov. 3.

They'll be trying to attract more folks like Allie Burbacher, a 21-year-old UT student from Circleville who was at Diva the same night as Mr. Taylor.

"I think there's a lot of undiscovered places here," she said. "I've only been here a few times. I go out in Columbus, and I feel it's a little bit safer here than in Columbus. There could be a great coffee shop here where I could hang out I don't know about."

"Downtown Latte," several at the bar offered, referring to the South St. Clair Street spot near Fifth Third.

For the communications major, downtown is undiscovered country.

"On campus, they don't give you any information about what's going on downtown. They only publicize what's going on at campus bars."

If you walk down the street from Diva, along Huron and past Jackson's, where there's a poetry slam many weekend nights, and past Fifth Third Field, the action picks up.

There, the music from under an event tent attached to the back of the Bronze Boar bounces off the brick walls of the baseball field and the brown stone of historic buildings, some undeveloped, including the nearby Berdan Building.

On Fridays, the bar, in all seasons, is standing room only inside.

It wasn't always that way.

The owner reconstructed the inside bar this year, moving it back a foot, to make room for increased numbers of patrons. Inside the Boar, Jay Hathaway, the 28-year-old manager, remembered the Portside commercial development of 20 years ago.

Portside Festival Marketplace, where COSI Toledo is now located, closed after an initial honeymoon period of popularity, a failed downtown development that opened in 1984 and closed in 1990.

That period represents the nadir of downtown activity that bottomed out in the late '90s.

"Portside, and then it was kind of empty, kind of like a ghost town," Mr. Hathaway said. "There's been a lot of talk [lately], and some action. A lot of restaurants and bars. We need a bowling alley or a movie theater downtown. It's an awesome idea, or a [marquee] movie theater, like back in the 1950s."

As the bar at the Boar filled up, Zach Lahey, a 20-something whose family owns Manhattan's restaurant on Adams Street, mused about downtown: "Without a doubt, the Warehouse District has taken off, with it's own life," he said.

As the Boar became busier, the dance clubs of downtown on the other side of Fifth Third Field looked like they might have a crowd problem.

Rain, at Jefferson and Huron, had an overflow crowd onto the street, and Margarita Rocks, at the corner of Jefferson and Superior, looked like it would break open and spill its contents onto the street.

A bulge of young people buzzed at the front door as they waited to get inside.

Scenes like this are what Mr. Crothers hopes to see increasingly in downtown Toledo, especially if a new arena is built in a few years.

"We're not there yet, but domino by domino it will get done," he said.

First Published September 24, 2006, 8:48 p.m.