The owners of a building housing Mike’s Place, a Berwyn nightclub notorious for loud, disruptive and belligerent patrons requiring repeated calls for police intervention, have put the building on the market.
The nightclub was open on Saturday, Aug. 8. At 10:30 p.m. there were 6 to 8 people gathered near the front door. The city of Berwyn had ordered Mike’s Place closed for 30 days starting in June after owner Micheal Lapinard acknowledged a slew of ordinance violations dating back nearly two years, including public disturbances that shut down traffic on Roosevelt Road and required a response on more than one occasion by all on duty Berwyn and Oak Park police officers.
Neighbors in Oak Park have reported gunfire, fights, and all sorts of nuisance behavior at closing time over the past several years.
The bar was allowed to re-open for business on July 7, but it appears it did not immediately open following the 30-day suspension, and things have remained quiet at the site.
One day before the bar was scheduled to re-open, it posted a detailed help wanted solicitation on its Facebook page for people to “Join the Mike’s Place Team.” The posting said the bar was hiring bartenders, bar backs, cooks and security personnel. “Keep our guests and team safe and sound,” it read.
That same night, the bar posted on its Facebook page for the first time since May 14.
The 6317 Roosevelt Road LLC has owned the building since 2013. Berwyn resident Pablo Quintana and far south suburban resident David J. Shewmake are the listed managers of the company. Neither man could be reached for comment. A number for Shewmake was inoperative, and a contact number for Quintana could not be found.
The building was put up for sale around mid-July, with an asking price of $675,000. The wording of the real estate posting presents the building to potential owners as a restaurant opportunity, touting its full kitchen and bar.
According to public records, in 2022 Quintana and Shewmake paid off a 2019 mortgage on the building and entered into a $200,000 promissory note that comes due in July 2027.
Public records show Shewmake has been an owner of the property since prior to 2010, and that he owns numerous properties throughout Cook County. Shewmake owns multiple large properties in Cook County through Four Feathers Properties, Rodzilla Properties and several other LLCs tied to Rodzilla Properties.
According to public records, Quintana, who had lived in Berwyn since at least 1996, sold his 2,200 square foot Euclid Avenue home in June for $550,000.
Problems at the 6317-19 Roosevelt Road location go back at least 20 years. Wednesday Journal headlines in June 2007 noted, “Rowdie Roosevelt bar patrons challenge OP, Berwyn cops,” and that area residents were “tired of fights, noise.” A subsequent story reported that Oak Park police were adding foot patrols near the bar and that a “pro-active neighborhood group of Oak Park and Berwyn residents was being formed.
In January 2008, Berwyn’s mayor publicly threatened the revocation of the bar’s liquor and business licenses.
Oak Park and Berwyn residents living near the bar and police from both communities are not the only ones who have had problems with the bar. Shewmake himself has allegedly been a victim of at least one bar owner at the site. In a 2010 Wednesday Journal article he said the previous bar owner who rented from him left the place “in shambles,” with “about $100,000” in damage to the interior, along with months of unpaid rent.
“As soon as we have all of the damages in order, I’m going to file suit,” Shewmake said at the time. “We’re business owners, we’re landlords and we’re happy to have a tenant, of course, and this should be a tenant that’s a lot more responsible than the last two we had there.”