There is quite an interesting place, on River Street, just as you enter downtown Manistee; a place where you can enjoy fresh whitefish from Lake Superior, Great Lakes surf and turf or dig into some apple cider tenderloin. You may want to sip an artisan cocktail as you relax and watch the boats go by.
It is a place, freshly reconditioned, that looks brand new, but somehow feels like 1895.
Sound like magic? Perhaps that would be overstating it, but the
Blue Fish Kitchen--opened July 3 after some nearly magical work involving federal and private money, state allocation, city officials and volunteers, and two hard-working entrepreneurs--is a special place.
The old Henry Winkler Building (built in 1895) sat vacant for four years before the Blue Fish Kitchen moved in, but after the aforementioned teamwork was finished, not to mention some deadline-beating labor by Cadillac firm Orschal Construction to renovate the dilapidated structure. It sometimes feels like magic to all of those involved.
"When I think that just one year ago, I was looking around this building, and there were birds and bats living in here, hornets' nests in three different parts of the ventilation system, water had been leaking through the roof for years, and the front of the building was falling apart, I sometimes can't believe we got it open, much less are enjoying the wonderful business that we are in downtown Manistee," says Connie Freiberg, co-owner of the Blue Fish with her husband, Chuck. Connie also serves as the Blue Fish executive chef.
"We stayed true to the original, 1895 architectural style, yet polished it up and restored it to brand new inside and out," she says. "It truly was an amazing endeavor that involved so many people."
This was a group effort that might not have started at all had it not been for a chance meeting between the Freibergs and former Manistee Main Street Downtown Development Authority Executive Director Travis Alden. Alden was at a mayoral exchange luncheon in August 2012 in Big Rapids, eating at the Blue Cow, another restaurant owned by the Freibergs, who, coincidentally, had been looking to buy a second eatery. Alden asked if they had ever considered Manistee, telling them about the available building. They wanted to take a look.
The two restaurateurs toured the building, and after seeing the place, Connie's initial reaction was "to turn around and run."
"But, luckily, Chuck's more of a visionary than I am," she says. "He could see past all the disrepair and see that this building could really be beautiful. I couldn't see it at the time, but it turns out, he was right."
One prohibitive factor was the $650,000 price tag on the building, which was in foreclosure. Had it not been for the $200,000 in repairs that the building needed, the price might have seemed more reasonable. But just as the Freibergs thought they were going to drop out of the picture, the Manistee DDA served up a plan that helped make the eatery a possibility.
The MDDA helped put together a pitch to the state of Michigan for a $330,000 Signature Building Grant, federal funds that are allocated by the state.
"If that grant could come through, it would reduce the Freibergs' cost to about $300,000 out-of-pocket instead of six, and suddenly that makes the deal more doable," says MDDA's chairman Jeff Reau. "Then the DDA tossed in another $15,000 grant of its own to help with the restoration of the building front, further enabling the purchase."
Steve Brower, chairman of the economic restructuring committee for the MDDA, said the building could have sat vacant for years without the help of the grant, because of the prohibitive asking price by the bank that held the building in foreclosure. That was bad for business in Manistee in more than one way.
"We had a market analysis done--it told us that $12 million a year was leaking out of the Manistee area because we didn't have enough restaurants," Brower says. "Plus, the building is the very first thing you see when you come into town. It was very important to us to get it filled with a viable restaurant. And, without the grant, the Freibergs' debt would have been too much to make the business viable."
From the summer of 2012, until the deal closed in May 2013, to the time the Blue Fish opened in July 2013, the Winkler Building went from a dilapidated eyesore to an architectural beauty in downtown Manistee.
Not that there wasn't a hiccup or two along the way.
"There's always going to be some heartburn in a deal like this," Brower says.
Added Freiberg: "There were a few conference calls when I had to literally go to another room and cry for a little bit. The process of getting the grant is so difficult sometimes. I mean, I can understand it because it's a lot of money and they want to make sure they're using it right, but they dig so deep.
"Sometimes I never thought we'd get here, but when I look around today, I'm so thankful for the DDA and everyone else who helped make this possible. Business has been great so far, and even though the summer season is over, we haven't had a slowdown.
"We're very happy to be in downtown Manistee."