The party's (finally) over at Public House
Confirming what may be the most unsecret secret on Lowest Greenville in years, Public House is closing their doors for the last time Monday evening.
This will definitely be the final closing, after three false starts when TXU cut off the power for non-payment in the last few months. Sources tell BD they have been running really behind on rent payments for months, and after the final beer is poured, the landlord will change the locks and close the doors permanently.
|
|
BD is not extremely happy to see them go - giddy, yes - since the concept really did fit in with the area. But like most businesses, the owners succumbed to the Lower Greenville Fever - after a few years of trying to make the rent on food sales, they realized it was not going to happen and cranked up the bar service. Throw in a bad attitude and a little bit of racism, and things started going downhill in just a few years.
Public House has a little notoriety in its history, most recently when the owner and bouncer claimed that an off-duty DPD officer pulled a weapon on them after trying to force his way back into the bar after closing time. Despite promises to the DPD and local media, they never could find the security videotape which would have shown the incident sans sound. Why? Because they were behind on their payments to the security monitoring service, which had already pulled the plug earlier, per sources in the DPD.
Our favorite news event was last October, when Andres Properties decided he wanted the city-owned parking spaces out front (and in front of Bandera - also RIP) for a patio and just started digging them out. Oops, they lied on their permit. In less than two weeks, under severe threats from the City to yank Certificates of Occupancy, the parking spaces were restored. But not until after the front of the building looked like a miniature construction site during TX OU weekend. The owners insisted to BD they had a lease which included the City's property for patios with their landlord, and it was about time the neighbors stopped ----ing with him. He told BD...
It's no one else's f*cking business what we do out here. I live in the neighborhood too, and I want this patio. We don't need permits, we can do whatever we want, and the neighbors just need to mind their own f*cking business. Instead of having a patio on the second-busiest weekend of the year, I've got a construction site in front of my bar. My life savings are tied up in this place and I am tired of being told what to do.(not sic).
|
|
With the closing of Public House, Andres Properties now has four empty bar storefronts. Madison has one (The Beagle) and one under renovation (Blarney Stone) to reopen shortly.
Bandera
Di Terra fka Firehouse
Public House
Slice fka Zymology
BD was told last week that the opening price to rent Slice's former space was $16,000 triple net per month, plus a $20,000 down payment. You could not sell enough pizza, beer and drugs to make that kind of rent.
Here are links to more stories about Public House from the Barking Dogs archives
Public House to Code Enforcement: You can't touch this...
Stealing spaces, heading to court
Playing the DPD race card on Lowest Greenville - yeah, that's the ticket
