You’re walking along the lakefront on a sunny afternoon with a friend from out of town. You decide you’d like a drink and a bite to eat, maybe sit along the glistening waters and watch the boats glide by as you munch on appetizers and sip a cocktail. You ponder your choices.
Summerfest? Sorry, the festival grounds are only open part time, only for a fee and only on select days from June through September.
The cafe in the Milwaukee Art Museum? Again, pay at the door. And they’ve never gotten around to putting tables outside on that perfect lakeside veranda.
McKinley Marina? Members only. Ditto at South Shore Yacht Club.
The new Alterra at the Lake? No liquor license. And it’s not really “at” the lake anyway. More like Alterra Across the Street From the Lake.
From St. Francis to Shorewood, there’s really no place in the city to sit along Lake Michigan’s shore and order up.
But wait, is that music you hear drifting across the water? Are those patio umbrellas in the distance? Why, yes. It’s the courtyard of Pieces of Eight, where skyline meets water like nowhere else, Milwaukee’s own Margaritaville.
Don’t get too comfortable in that deck chair, Parrothead. If the city has its way, yonder restaurant will be just a memory come January 31. As developers and bigwigs finalize the $30 million plan for the Municipal Pier (aquarium/research lab/schooner wharf/education center, all packaged in faux Calatrava), the city attorney and board of harbor commissioners are ready to throw Pieces of Eight overboard and replace it with their own 100-seat restaurant.
Owned by Specialty Restaurants of Long Beach, California, Pieces of Eight was built on city land in 1969. Over the years, it’s gotten a sweet deal on rent. The eatery paid the city a mere $36,104 last fiscal year, according to the Port of Milwaukee.
Knowing it had a good thing going, the restaurant in 1998 notified the city that it wanted to extend its occupancy to 2008, in accordance with its lease and subject to a rent adjustment. But the city at the time was going into battle with Summerfest over its lease and put Pieces of Eight on the back burner.
Negotiations got serious in the spring of 2001, and the city presented what it considered a fair offer to Specialty Restaurants. The owner, however, failed to respond, says the city. So last January, the harbor commissioners set a deadline and voted to give Pieces of Eight the boot.
Pieces of Eight tells a different story, of course, and the matter could end up in court.
Admittedly, the restaurant has not been an ideal tenant in past years, its menu fickle, its service sub-par, its furnishings outdated. Its reputation was stained blood red in March 2001 when a drug deal gone bad left two people shot dead in a car in the parking lot.
Lately, though, the restaurant has made improvements. A landscaped walkway and pond have been installed. The dining room has been remodeled and fitted with new windows. The kitchen has been modernized, a new chef hired and a new menu introduced. Still to come are a redesigned tiki bar, another patio at the tip of the peninsula, fire pits along the water and thousands of twinkling holiday lights in the trees.
All told, the restaurant will shell out more than $600,000.
Skeptical minds wonder: Why the last-ditch face-lift? Is the restaurant trying to curry favor after dropping the ball on the lease renewal? Or is this a gambit to drive up the property value before asking a court to award financial compensation if the restaurant is shut down?
“We’re trying to make friends with the city,” says chef and general manager Chris Hill, giving away little else.
But it’s just as hard to appreciate the motives of the city. “It’s not complicated,” insists Ken Szallai, Port of Milwaukee director. “It’s a business deal.”
Maybe so. But long before the collapse of lease negotiations, city representatives said privately that Pieces of Eight was doomed. The food might be mediocre, yes, but does overcooked halibut warrant leveling the place? If that’s the criterion, we’ll be bulldozing restaurants from here to Oconomowoc.
There are plans galore for lakefront redevelopment – some good, some in need of fine-tuning. (Must the expansion of the War Memorial be so massive? Is a high-speed ferry to Muskegon, Michigan, financially sane?) The lakefront is indeed hallowed ground, not to mention some of the priciest in the city.
But Pieces of Eight occupies just a sliver of land, not exactly the personification of David Geffen privatizing a big chunk of cherished shoreline. In fact, chef Hill invites picnickers to stop by the courtyard anytime to use what he calls “this city park.” Architecturally, the low-slung cedar and stone building is compatible with its surroundings, bringing to mind a lakeside chalet.
Call off the eviction police. Save that corner of the peninsula for an after-hours nightcap or champagne brunch along the water. If City Hall can work out a deal with the implacable Bo Black, it can find a compromise with Pieces of Eight.
