Capital saloon to close its doors

The Baltimore Sun

In the end, the very thing that was meant to help a landmark Annapolis restaurant survive, killed it.

The thick steel scaffolding put up a year ago to bolster the caving fa?ade of Riordan's Saloon, a popular place for local residents and tourists, scared customers away, owner Mike Riordan says. After 30 years at a premier spot near City Dock, Riordan's is closing tomorrow.

"People see the scaffolding and they think that we're either under construction or closed," said Riordan, a former NBA star who was on the New York Knicks' 1970 championship team and later the old Bullets in Baltimore and Washington (now the Wizzards).

"It just put a pall on the whole business and choked us to death."

Business had dropped 25 percent since last summer, Riordan said, and the restaurant's three owners worked without pay for the past five months. Arguments with the owner of the more than 200-year-old building over renovations and rising rent compounded problems.

The departure of Riordan's from this scene of quaint shops and restaurants reflects the price businesses pay to operate in a historic district.

On lower Main Street, three buildings ravaged by a five-alarm fire in November 2005 are still waiting to be reincarnated as two candy stores, an apartment and office space. Last summer, the historic Market House of shops reopened after a 1 1/2 -year closure, renovations and failed negotiations to bring in a Dean & DeLuca shop.

"The historic downtown area makes it tough for businesses to work ... well. It seems hard to conduct business with certain requirements that the city has," said Clare Vanderbeek, head of the Annapolis Business Association. "Riordan's is a real loss."

Mike Miron, the city's economic development director, shared her disappointment but said preserving the historic fabric of downtown is important.

"I think there were some disagreements with how to do that," he said. "But in the end, we really felt like getting that building renovated and with a sprinkler [system] would be the best decision."

On a recent night, a dull roar filled Riordan's. A group of recent high school graduates in the dining area laughed at entries in their yearbooks. Customers in the bar gabbed about work, grimaced at games they watched intermittently on television, drank popular local microbrews and dunked rolls into the creamy crab dip that helped make the place popular.

There was a half-hour wait to be seated. It was the kind of business that waitresses said they hadn't seen in months.

Catherine and Jamie Brown were among the customers crowded at the bar. The high school sweethearts had their first date here. They also worked here 22 years ago: Catherine was a salad girl and hostess, and Jamie was a bouncer. Serving as a hostess at Riordan's was also her sister-in-law's first job.

Their families came to Riordan's for special meals on Christmas Eve, after weddings and graduations. They gathered at the pub for one last time to toast those memories.

"We'd always come here; this is where we'd have the after party," said Catherine Brown of Sherwood Forest, just outside Annapolis. "We traveled because my husband was in the military and whenever we'd come back to Annapolis, we'd come to Riordan's. There will never be another Riordan's. We're really going to miss it."

Trouble for the restaurant started last July, Riordan said, when city inspectors found weak spots on the outside front wall and ordered supporting scaffolding for a building whose oldest parts date back to the late 1700s. The steel grid completely covers the front of the restaurant, isolating the outside patio tables that were once the most coveted seats at the pub.

Tourists and local residents "walked on the opposite side of the street when they saw that. It definitely hurt them," Miron said. Meanwhile, the pub's staff, discouraged by slow business, found new jobs.

Over the past year, Riordan ordered a series of engineering reports to show that the building's trouble was localized and didn't require full scaffolding. He fought with the owner and city officials over removing the scaffolding.

But the building's owner, Dana J. Florestano, a preservation architect based in Indianapolis, told the Annapolis Historic Preservation Commission that the building needed immediate refurbishment and the scaffolding was necessary for liability purposes, Miron said. Florestano spent eight months before the commission getting approval for renovation plans, something Riordan continued to fight. Florestano did not return calls for comment.

Faced with looming renovations, a decline in business because of the scaffolding and the threat of his rent tripling, Riordan said he had no option but to close. His last days have been a blur of errands: printing final checks for the staff, stopping the mail, canceling vendor contracts, talking to accountants - all the while fielding interruptions from friends and customers who dropped by.

"I just feel like we got sucker-punched and it didn't just affect me or the owners, it affected 70 jobs and 30 years of a livelihood," he said.

ruma.kumar@baltsun.com

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