Six months after fire, 19 Bar sets sights on reopening

Inside the 19 Bar, construction workers hammer away on beams and walls. Six months after a fire burned it down, the bar is far from the dim lights and crowded tables that regulars remember, but owner Gary Hallberg says it’s coming together.

The decades-old bar that welcomed gay clientele from the beginning is aiming to reopen by the end of the year. The bulk of the work — permits for rebuilding, new floors and a new roof — are done.

“I’d say there’s one quarter left,” Hallberg says. “Then the finish work will be all the minutiae: the glassware, finding pool balls, getting new change machines.” 

The bar has been closed since March 22, when a recycling truck hit a utility pole that fell on the building’s gas supply and sparked a fire. One employee preparing to open got out and was not injured.

Frequent patrons and other local bars responded quickly, launching a series of online and in-person fundraisers for the employees who are out of work.

Hallberg says it’s been strange to be closed for so long. Since its opening in the 1950s, 19 Bar has weathered the loss of friends and regulars during the peak of the AIDS epidemic and a long closure during COVID-19. The fire came during ongoing instability in the industry, as several other Twin Cities bars and restaurants have shut their doors in recent months.

But Hallberg says 19 Bar is on its way back. 

Hallberg consults a stack of pre-fire bar photos as he directs reconstruction. He says his goal is to make it look just like it did before the fire, down to the order of the pictures on the walls. He wants it to be familiar to the patrons who have been coming here for years. 

“We’ve added on and bumped out walls and grown, but far as customer base, a lot of the people I knew way back then are still around, and new ones that become regulars,” Hallberg says. “It’s just a low-key place. You make more friends here than probably anywhere.” 

He’s planning one major change: Hallberg will sell the refurbished bar to a long-time manager. Now in his 70s, he is ready to retire after decades of ownership.

“Thirty-two years, that’s enough for me,” Hallberg says, “but it’s been fun owning it.” 

The sale has been planned for several months. Just before the fire, he and the buyer had signed paperwork and set a closing date that would have happened just a week after the fire. After the purchase was delayed, Hallberg says he’s ready to finalize the transaction after the bar is fixed up, especially knowing that someone close to the bar will be running it.

“There was no doubt about that, it was going to be one of my employees or somebody in the community,” Hallberg says. 

As the bar rebuilds, Hallberg is suing Lakeshore Recycling Systems, the company whose truck sparked the fire in March. The lawsuit, filed in Hennepin County in August, is seeking to recoup the costs of rebuilding the bar.

According to Hallberg’s complaint, the recycling company “has failed and refused to compensate plaintiffs for their damages as a result of the fire including, but not limited to the loss of market value of the property and assets.” 

In its August response, Lakeshore Recycling Systems “admits that an accident occurred involving a vehicle owned by defendant,” but denies responsibility for covering the losses. 

Lakeshore Recycling Systems did not immediately respond to a request for comment. 

Regardless of the outcome, Hallberg says the bar will be ready to welcome customers back. He’s brainstorming a soft-open party for regulars, which he hopes can also be a celebration of the bar’s decades in operation.

“We’ll go back to, like, 1992 prices or something like that,” Hallberg says. “We’ll try to get people to bring in pictures that they have from years ago — something from the past.”

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