When a part of Detroit’s nearly 100-year-old Temple Bar building unexpectedly crumbled in May, owner George Boukas had no idea it would force his longstanding business to close for half the year.
To help cover the costs, last week Temple Bar manager Larry Love launched a GoFundMe crowdfunding campaign with a goal of raising $30,000.
“We thought it would be relatively easy,” Boukas, who inherited the bar from his father and uncle nearly 40 years ago, tells Metro Times. “But because the building is historic and in the Cass Park Historic District, we had to get all of the plans approved through [them], and they only meet once a month.”
Historic districts are designated through local ordinance and enforced by a commission in order to preserve the character of a neighborhood.
“We had submitted plans that [the commission] said weren’t historically accurate, so we had to continuously go back and resubmit plans to their satisfaction,” Boukas says. “Which, you know, I didn’t have a problem with — I just wasn’t aware that this would keep us closed for five months.”
Boukas says he initially wanted to simplify the roof’s crumbled parapet into more of a streamlined art deco-inspired look, but the commission wanted him to retain the scrolling and shell shapes in the design, and to have them redone in limestone.
“It’s been a nightmare,” Boukas says. “Those costs are pretty astronomical.”
He adds, “People don’t realize that being closed for five months, none of the bills stopped. It costs the bar on the average $18,000 a month to be closed. That’s where we weren’t prepared, you know, for it taking this long.”
Boukas says the funds will help support his loyal staff of five, who have continued to come into Temple Bar to feed Darla, the bar’s resident cat who died last week at 22 years old.
“Oh, my God, they’ve been amazing,” Boukas says. “We were all coming in to to feed her and make sure that she was taken care of and the bar was secure.”
Boukas says the problems with the historic commission were compounded by the fact that the historic district is covered not only by the Cass Park Historic District, but other commissions at the city, state, and federal levels.
“It’s a layering of historic designations,” he says. “We weren’t aware of the complexities of everything that we had to go through.”
Boukas says he thinks the rules and regulations of historic districts should be reconsidered.
“The issue for me is the commission only meets once a month, and it just slows down the process to complete a project on a timely basis,” he says. “Five months, to me, has been a long hard time.”
Boukas is hopeful, however, that he will be able to reopen his bar soon.
“It shouldn’t take that long,” at this point, he says. “The crews are already lined up. The materials are here.”
Aside from getting the bar up and running, Boukas says he plans to put a fresh coat of paint on the building to better match the exact burgundy color it had in the 1940s.
Other than that, Boukas says he plans to change absolutely nothing about the bar.
“I love being a dive bar,” he says. “People walk in, they know what to expect. You know, we’re not pretentious, and it’s just fun. I love our clientele.”
Boukas says he added the rainbow neon lights in the bar’s windows years ago to signal that Temple Bar is a place that welcomes the LGBTQ+ community and its allies.
“If this isn’t for you, don’t come in,” he says. “We have a gay party here once a month, and it was during a Red Wings game, and I have a bar full of gay folks, and all of a sudden, you know, we were hit with 100 Red Wings jerseys, and we didn’t know what to expect. These people had such a great time that when we closed at two o’clock, we still had 80 jerseys in the bar, having a blast.”
He adds, “That’s what we’re about — people understanding that it’s not that difficult to be nice.”
