The Lemon Grove’s Jacob Harver has played the media well.

A downtown Youngstown café where an Ohio senator was assaulted last week is turning the proverbial lemon into lemonade.

Jacob Harver, owner of the fortunately named Lemon Grove, has used the attention sparked by the February 6 incident as a forum to deliver good news about his establishment, the downtown and even the guy accused of suckering Senator Robert Hagan.

The soft-spoken Harver is no public relations luminary. But by reacting quickly, being accessible and telling the truth on his own terms when the bad news hit, he squeezed out a pitcher full of favorable publicity, goodwill and patronage.

As The Vindicator and others have reported, a 30-year-old dancer was charged with punching Hagan, 60, after the two exchanged words.

Seizing an opportunity

Many in a position like Harver’s would have ignored calls from the media and issued a meaningless “statement.”

But Harver welcomed interviews. He told reporters that the Lemon Grove isn’t a rowdy bar, but a café that serves alcohol and coffee to patrons who listen to its music, admire its art, play board games, crochet, work on their laptops and whatever.

He called the incident out of character for the café and the downtown — and the dancer, whom he knows.

Nice results

Harver’s comments have drawn excellent exposure on all three Youngstown television stations, in The Vindicator and on several local blogs.  A few days after the incident, Harver wrote his own recap and distributed it to reporters, customers and friends (read the detailed letter on the Youngstown Renaissance blog).

Snippets from his report were quoted in several of the follow-up stories, including Vindicator Editor Todd Franko’s column on Sunday.  In terms of business, last weekend was one of the best since the Lemon Grove opened last summer, Harver said.

“The Vindicator did a good job of covering this from the start,” he said, “but I didn’t think the whole story was told in full, so I compiled my own report.

“I don’t believe in the whole ‘No comment’ thing. I think people should talk about their points of view.”

That’s a premise that can bear fruit in a lot of situations.