Brein Clements, co-owner and head chef at Restaurant Omakase, has watched the same scene repeatedly since he opened the restaurant in downtown Riverside in July.

"People finish their meal, they go straight to their cars and drive off," said Clements, who operates the restaurant - a combination of Japanese and French cuisine - near The Mission Inn along with his wife Roryann. "They don't stay and walk around the city, because there really isn't that much to see. It gets frustrating."

But that may change: the City Council Feb. 20 approved a $50 million residential-retail project called m solè, pronounced "em-so-lay," which will be built by Los Angeles developer Alan Mruvka...

Developers like the concept because it appeals to a wide demographic, from young single professionals to young couples without children to empty nesters.

"If you have a lot of amenities in a downtown that people can walk to, then it has a chance of working," said Joel Kotkin, an author and lecturer who has written extensively on urban planning issues.

"But there isn't that much in downtown Riverside, except for the Mission Inn and a few stores, so I'm not sure. But there are a lot of ways you can spruce up downtown Riverside."

Cities should welcome projects like m solè if they believe such a development can succeed, said Kotkin, a senior fellow at the New America Foundation, a non-partisan public policy institute in Washington, D.C.

Municipalities should be reluctant to subsidize them, he said.

"I'm all for a little bit of capitalist risk-taking," Kotkin said. "If a developer wants to spend his money, that's fine with me. Why not? Just don't spend any of my money..."

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