Before you say the last thing downtown Ann Arbor needs is another bar, imagine an outdoor courtyard under twinkly lights, surrounded by mature espaliered trees. It’s a casual German beer garden that also features Michigan craft brews.
That’s the latest summertime vision of the creative Mark Hodesh, most recently of Mark’s Carts fame. This year, the carts will double as the exclusive food vendors for Bill’s Beer Garden, which Hodesh says will offer “no Miller, no Budweiser—just all good beers.”
Though the liquor license is not in hand, Hodesh says he’s been told it’s a good enough prospect to go ahead and get everything else set up. His managing partner is Bill Zolkowski, a newly retired Plymouth-Canton High School principal who once worked with Hodesh at the Fleetwood and in the seventies ran the Baobab store across Ashley where Sweetwaters is now.
“Synergy” characterizes the new venture, Hodesh says, what with varied Mark’s Carts peddling the food, even though Bill’s Beer Garden will be on the other side of his Downtown Home and Garden store, in the area next to the greenhouse that will continue to be used as a parking lot by day. When the five o’clock closing bell chimes, staff will pull out the long tables and cribbage board, and click into action a yet-to-be-determined system for getting food orders from Mark’s Carts over to the garden. Fixed pavilion roofs will be erected near the greenhouse once the beer garden gets a go-ahead. “Double use is the key thing,” Hodesh says. “It’s a way to use a great asset twice.”
