Respect old Pieces of Eight look and feel

Dear Editor,

What do you want the old Pieces of Eight restaurant (located on Municipal Pier north of Discovery World, most recently doing business as Harbor 550) to look like when it is scheduled to reopen next spring?

The restaurant’s corporate parent, Specialty Restaurants of Wisconsin, Inc., closed the facility last year. This past August, Milwaukee’s premier philanthropist, Michael Cudahy, bought out their lease (reportedly for around $1 million). The expectation then was that the site would be used for a new building for UWM’s School of Freshwater Sciences, and/or by the Milwaukee 7 business boosters for a water institute (representing an estimated 120 companies in southeast Wisconsin doing business in the freshwater industrial sector), or some combination of the two. Shortly thereafter, the relationship between Mr. Cudahy and UWM soured, apparently because of disputes about who would control the development.

With the larger plans for the site scuttled, on Oct. 6, Mr. Cudahy came before the Finance and Personnel Committee of the Milwaukee Board of Harbor Commissioners with concept plans for remodeling the restaurant so that it could be opened next spring. Both the committee and the full board (two days later) approved the plans, allowing them to move to city departments for permitting.

The concept plans included a new kitchen, new windows, converting the existing two-level dining area to a single level (with a balcony opening in the center of the north wall), a garden area in place of the pond, extension of the shoreline trail around the building’s east end to connect with existing trails, and replacement of the windowed cupolas with spire-like cupolas similar to those seen in American Colonial-style architecture. No representation of the color/paint scheme was presented.

Mr. Cudahy’s restaurant partners are Bartolotta’s restaurants, operators of several local top-end eateries, including Lake Park Bistro. Mr. Bartolotta suggested average checks would be in the $45 to $48 range. A few harbor commissioners suggested a café section with lower prices to allow a wider clientele to enjoy the facility.

If you have fond memories of the look and feel of Pieces of Eight as it has been since it opened in 1969, with its sea-green, low-slung 1960s beach-house profile, reminiscent of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Prairie School, and want to continue enjoying the restaurant with the same look and feel until the lease expires in 2018 (along with an opportunity for a more affordable menu), then it is important that you contact your elected officials and the city of Milwaukee Historic Preservation Commission (286-5707), and tell them you want an upgraded restoration, and not a style-changing remodel.

Gregory Francis Bird
Bay View

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