An elephant and a hippopotamus dominated the discussion at a gathering in Mount Vernon, but no one was headed on a safari.

Two Baltimore institutions are seeking to make a comeback of sorts, and last night representatives for each presented their plans to members of the Mount Vernon Belvedere Association.

New owners of the restaurant formerly known as The Brass Elephant say they hope to open a new restaurant by year’s end at the same location, 924 North Charles Street.

They will be seeking a new liquor license from the Board of Liquor License Commissioners for Baltimore City at a May 28 hearing. The owners say they haven’t decided yet whether to call their business The Brass Elephant.

Sponsors of the annual Baltimore Pride festival, meanwhile, are seeking to move the block party on the first day of the event back to its longtime “footprint” around Charles and Eager streets, site of the Hippo and Grand Central night spots, after a move last year to Pearlstone Park and Mount Royal Avenue.

The second day of this year’s festival would be held in Druid Hill Park. The Pride Festival is one of the city’s largest, drawing 25,000 to 30,000 people. This year’s proposed dates are July 25 and 26 – one weekend after ArtScape.

Both groups are seeking support from the Mount Vernon community to move ahead with their projects.

“Music to Accompany Chewing”

The restaurant owners, Steven Rivelis and Linda Brown Rivelis, are seeking permission to have live entertainment seven nights a week, and the community has been hesitant to support requests for live entertainment in restaurants without certain restrictions.

In the case of the former Brass Elephant, the owners have agreed to stop any live entertainment by 11 p.m. on weeknights (Sunday to Thursday) and by 1 a.m. on weekends (Friday and Saturday nights). They also say the live entertainment will essentially be “music to accompany chewing,” most likely performed by musicians playing a cello, violin or acoustic guitar.

The Rivelises bought the building on Charles Street about six months ago and have begun preparing it to reopen as a restaurant. For many years it housed the white-table-cloth Elephant and then had a short life as a nightspot called The Museum, which had entertainment that drew complaints from the community.

The new owners say they are working to create a restaurant that ”sparkles” and will be considered a “gem” for the city, as The Brass Elephant was for many years. They say the restaurant will seat 116 and feature New American cuisine “with a global flavor,” and that they have found a chef but aren’t prepared yet to say who it is.

Having acquired the right to use the Brass Elephant name, they are in the process of deciding whether that is the right direction to go. “We want to honor the past, but we also want to move to the future,” said Linda Rivelis.

The owners are retaining as many of the building’s architectural details as they can, including chandeliers and the long marble bar on the second floor, but the furnishings likely will change, Steven Rivelis said.

“We don’t want to be dated,” he said. “We don’t want to feel like we’re going back to the 1980s. It’s a new century. It’s a new way of dining.”

Jason Curtis, president of the Mount Vernon Belvedere Association, said the organization’s board has agreed not to oppose the Rivelis’ restaurant license application in light of their agreement to restrict live entertainment.

A Positive Direction

The Pride Festival  has been in existence since 1975 and has been run since 1977 by the GLCCB (Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender Community Center of Baltimore and Central Maryland).

Over the years the event has become one of Maryland’s best known LGBTQ events.  Its Saturday afternoon block party has traditionally been held on Eager Street, with the Hippo and Grand Central night spots as a backdrop.

The last time the block party was held on Eager Street, in 2013, it drew complaints regarding excessive drinking and under-aged drinking. In 2014, the event was moved several blocks away to Pearlstone Park and Mount Royal Avenue.

This year the GLCCB applied to the city to move the first day of the festival back to its traditional home around Charles and Eager Streets.

The city has changed its regulations for festivals to require community approval for large events, and the Mount Vernon Belvedere Association created an ad hoc committee to review plans for the Pride festival.  The committee met with representatives from the GLCCB on May 13 for several hours to review its plans.

Paul Liller, Development Coordinator for the GLCCB, told members last night that the move to Mount Royal Avenue was unpopular with many in the LGBT community and the GLCCB wants to move the festival back to its previous location and will work hard to address the community’s concerns.

“It’s a whole new board, a new staff,” he said of the GLCCB. “We’re really trying to move things in a positive direction.”

Festival Improvements

Liller outlined a series of steps the GLCCG will be taking to prevent problems that have surfaced in the past. The steps include

• Increasing security by contracting with a private team of 13 security guards, who will provide support in addition to Baltimore police officers.

• Requiring wristbands, at a cost of $5, for participants over the age of 21 who want to drink alcohol in the Pride “footprint.” This would be the first year for wristbands at the Pride festival. Liller said the Grand Central and Hippo managers have agreed to honor the wristband policy as well.

• Improving cleanliness by hiring Midtown Community Benefits District staffers to manage clean up throughout the event.

• Curtailing musical performances on stage by 9:30 p.m. to ensure that the event ends by 10 p.m.

• Fining vendors if they don’t stop selling by 9 p.m. and don’t break down their locations by 10 p.m.

Liller said the footprint for July 25 would include Eager Street roughly from St. Paul Street to Cathedral Street and Charles Street from Chase Street to Read Street (with an extension southward to the Washington Monument during the Pride Parade).

On Saturday, the festival permit covers the period from 5-10 p.m., he said. This year there will be two stages for live performances, one at Charles and Eager streets, and one at Charles and Read streets. On Sunday, the Pride event at Druid Hill Park will run from 11 a.m.-6 p.m., he said.

Date Change

Liller said the GLCCB  previously had the Pride festival in June but another group snagged its traditional late June date, hence this year’s July date.

Liller said that turned out to be beneficial because the July date doesn’t conflict with Pride festivals in any other cities, such as New York or Washington, and the Baltimore Pride event has been able to get more sponsors in 2015 as a result. He said the GLCCB expects to raise $105,000 from the event in 2015, compared to $45,000 in 2014.

Curtis, the Mount Vernon association president, said last night the board will meet within 48 hours to decide whether to support the GLCCB’s festival permit request. He noted that Liller’s presentation “wasn’t very controversial” based on the response from members at the meeting.

“It’s a great event,” he said of the festival. “We’re glad to have it back on Charles Street.”

A Font for the Hippo?

Before the meeting ended, community members also briefly discussed the planned closing of the Hippo nightclub this fall after a run of 43 years. Owner Chuck Bowers recently disclosed that the building will be turned into a CVS store.

Steve Shen, chairman of Mount Vernon’s architectural review committee, told members that Bowers owns the building at 1 West Eager Street and has agreed to lease it to the chain.

Shen said his group has worked to make sure that CVS preserves the 1939 building’s Art Deco exterior in keeping with Baltimore’s guidelines for historic preservation.

For signs, he said, his group has encouraged CVS to use lettering with a font like the Hippo’s or that of its predecessor, the Chanticleer Lounge. He said the chain’s architect, Norr LLC of Detroit, also has been asked to keep the building’s distinctive weathervane above the Charles Street entrance.

Shen said his group has encouraged CVS to retain “all the details of the building that make it special, so if somebody wanted to turn it back [to a nightclub], it could be turned back.”

For now, he said, “We just don’t want to see the building go dark.”