Danny's Tavern Is For Sale (Again)
Who better yet to buy the building that contributed to many memorable nights in Chicago than a Danny’s Tavern regular (me) — or rather, a dedicated group of regulars or past employees under a worker/community-owned model? This was the conversation that immediately sparked across Instagram after a Facebook Marketplace listing for the building was shared on social media this past Monday. It was April 8, 2024, mere hours after the solar eclipse, coincidentally also my birthday. Was this a sign? Posters (including myself) all bore the same message: I am buying Danny’s / who has a million dollars? / let’s crowdfund, I’ll throw to it etc, etc. Speaking for myself and maybe others: we wish we were serious. Is anyone?
I questioned this reality imminently. The morning before I saw the listing, my brother texted me, expressing his dissatisfaction with corporate work life and proposed the concept of us opening a bar together. Coincidentally, it was an idea I’d already been toying with, a quasi-real/backup plan saved for my later adulthood; a path I figured I could go down and go down successfully if my other life goals hadn’t come into fruition by then. I’d considered deeply that a local bar-club owner could be one of them. And my brother and I, in many ways incredibly different, could play to our strengths — him, business, finances, and numbers; me, creative, PR, and management; the both of us, bringing different kinds of people together. A sibling duo! — something we never quite had in our childhood.
Family matters aside, a friend of mine texted me in the meantime and said that a down payment for the Danny’s building might be 100k and I could get a loan. Could I leave New York right now and move back to Chicago? I imagined a reality in which I did. Then my brother texted: Holy shit, should we buy it? He went on to mirror my friends earlier text, reiterating the math of such an investment: a 20% down payment would be somewhere around $220k; an approximate $7,500 monthly mortgage at current rates. Despite the fact that I don’t have the income to buy property, let alone commit to a mortgage, or know anything about starting a business, it didn’t feel impossible. And I hope that it is possible, but I’m just not sure it could be me right now.
Regardless, I wanted to learn more and at least confirm that the listing was real (I may not be a potential buyer, but I am nosy). I messaged the profile connected to the Facebook listing for more info and after digging, surmised that Ryan J. Noe, who posted the listing, is either the broker or related to the building owner; he reiterated that ‘the building is vacant, has no tavern license and we have owned the building for quite a while, renting to the bar owners.’ Another friend of mine then messaged me, suggesting an appraisal, asserting that the listing poster must be related to the landlords who tried to raise rent on Danny’s during the pandemic, even though the building was in considerable disrepair — a similar story that occured five years earlier, in 2015. No surprise there.
I scoured Google. The owner last listed in public building records was Michael Dragovich; his daughter Jan was supposedly the building manager. In a 2015 DNAInfo article that circulated over the previous closing scare, it was reported that a death in the family of the building owners had resulted in a month-to-month lease that the landlords didn’t want to renew; that the building’s roof was caving in and needed repairs that they wouldn’t pay for. Ultimately, the landlords and Danny’s co-owners were able to come to an agreement. That lasted until 2020, when the bar closed indefinitely. And in September 2021, nearly a year after, it was reported by Block Club Chicago that the building was on the market for $850,000 by Coordinate Properties, who at the time declined to comment. Seeing as nothing came from that, it’s disappointing to see that the building has been sitting unused, vacant, for four years.
As the baton of ownership remains unknown, Danny’s co-owners Terry Alexander and Michael Noone, partners in the popular One Off Hospitality restaurant group (Big Star, Publican Quality Meats, Violet Hour, Doves Luncheonette, etc) are quiet, and pretty much have been since 2020. But then again, while legitimate new sources haven’t touched on this update yet, I don’t think they’re jumping to social media to voice their opinions. And frankly I have no leads on how to contact them for a quote. If they were somehow reading this, then hi!!! But something tells me they don’t want to be involved.
Surely, though, Mr. Alexander must have some remnant of entrepreneurial spirit for the saving of Danny’s? After all, his One Off Hospitality bio quotes him meeting his wife Kristin at Danny’s in 1991 after pouring her a pint of Guinness, and that he continues to live with his family in Wicker Park. I would like to say the same enthusiasm applies to co-owner Michael Noone, but I can’t find any bios on him to justify this.
If anyone could empathize with the urgency of buying the building and reopening Danny’s four years later, might it be prompted by the duo who took over ownership in the first place? Surely they could invest in such a place. And though it was last reported that the bar had been struggling for a while, then why not explore the proposal that many young people have already voiced, which is that it be delegated to a worker/community-owned and operated model? An option that might be a more just and durable approach in today’s business climate. Seeing Danny’s reopen to generations of new and returning patrons — it would be an impeccable success story if it came to fruition.
So who’s going to step up? Shedding light on the Danny’s listing feels like a race against time, in many ways it is: I am racing against time to take advantage of writing this at my day job before I lose the energy and momentum, racing to publish this piece before the listing disappears and the story is forgotten, racing to make this news known before someone buys the Danny’s building and it falls into the hands of what, we don’t know: something better or the same, or what would be a more realistic outcome, something far worse AKA my worst fear: that a corporate entity will buy the building and knock it down, only to replace it with another lifeless, soulless, depressing, grey two-story condo, to become forgettable like all the other ones that dot our beloved Chicago, making it as cold and grey as the heart of winter, when there is no hearth to enter, to warm us. But Danny’s could be that place again. Preservation is always an option.
And by that, I mean preservation in the most literal sense, the preservation of the physical building — because with the building for sale, this is an option. Because preserving Danny’s has already been a natural reaction since the bar closed in 2020. How many lost venues can say the same? Notice how Smiths Night at Danny’s became Smith’s Night at Danny’s at the Empty Bottle? The same goes for monthly music events Night Moves and Hot On The Heels, which moved to the California Clipper (which had its own stint of closure) after the pandemic. Whether you were there for it or not, whether you you care about it or not, Danny’s legacy is threaded into the web of Chicago’s current nightlife; a result, a compromise, to what was initially out of our control. But it doesn’t have to be out of our hands anymore.
To many, Danny’s might be just another bar, just another building. Maybe meant to remain a relic of time, good time, some of which we were lucky to experience. But then again, the Facebook listing speaks for itself: One of Chicago’s greatest dive bars for sale. There’s still nothing quite like it out there. So why not save it?
UPDATE 4/16/24, 9:30am CST/10:30am EST: Block Club Chicago reports: Danny’s Tavern Schlitz Sign Appears On West Town Building Years After It Was Reported Stolen: Danny’s, a beloved Bucktown dive bar and dance club, closed in 2020. The iconic sign was reported stolen in the summer of 2021 and has not surfaced publicly since — until now.
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