The Packard Pub abruptly shut its doors last spring with a sign in the window announcing the place was closed for renovations.
In September, the pub reopened–with a new owner, Joseph Goychay, and a new manager, Tom Mikesell. As for previous owner Kyle Miller, it’s unclear what’s become of him. His Buffalo Wings & Rings franchise in Chesterfield Township closed around the same time as the pub, and his cell phone has been disconnected.
Mikesell, thirty, has a B.A. in business as well as a culinary arts degree. He moved to Michigan from Florida to be near family just weeks before the pub reopened, trusted that he’d find a job somehow–and did. In Florida, he had been the executive chef for the Tommy Bahama chain of restaurants, a gig he found “very, very grueling … I didn’t really have a life. It was getting pretty stressful.”
Mikesell had just thirty-six hours to get the pub ready to go. Primed with adrenaline left over from his Tommy Bahama days, he says it really wasn’t that bad. “We had some kinks to iron out before we opened the doors,” he says. “It was dirty and dingy.”
But he’s already cleaned the place up, and he’s got definite ideas about how he wants to market it. “I really want to focus on the college kids,” he says. “So the word of mouth gets out that it’s not the old Packard Pub where things were crazy all the time, where students thought they couldn’t come because fights were breaking out all the time.”
Packard Pub, 640 Packard. 929-2760. Daily 11 a.m.-2 a.m. packardpub.com
