Porter & Frye
Porter & Frye is Minneapolis’ newest fine dining restaurant. Our design team likes to think it’s the crown jewel of the Ivy redevelopment - even if its main dining room is in the basement. Two level restaurants are never easy to operate and can often feel disconnected, but the team assembled by Walsh Bishop Senior Designer Ed Wilms knew this space had a unique opportunity.
When Wilms and Owner Jeff Laux first toured the location, it was late in the development of the overall project, but standing in what is now the elegantly sparse dining room of P&F, you would have never known. The basement was dark, oppressive and filled with water mains, piping, HVAC ductwork. What little space that was left over was consumed with tables and chairs for a makeshift break room for the construction team of the tower.
Some sort of grand stair had always been planned to the lower level, but the concept plans from earlier designs called for it in the center of the room. Not only did that place it squarely in the midst of prime steak eatin’ real estate, it also did nothing to lighten the space visually. Wilms and Laux agreed from the first moment, that the stair should be moved to the corner taking advantage of the existing structure (read cheaper) and connecting an opening in the floor with natural daylight from the street level windows and window wells (read what a wow!).
The new grand stair makes the transition from day time lunches and happy hour revelry to elegant eatery below a true ritual. Descending the stair you approach the VIP see-and-be-seen booth that sits below and cascade of glass chandeliers. Custom designed oval dining booths offer privacy for dinner conversation - yet still let you survey the entire dining room. Metallic shear draperies allow the room to be divided into small rooms for private parties.
And to top it all off, Chef Steven Brown is making some of the most interesting and accessible food this side of the Mississippi.
Walsh Bishop Cleans Up!
On Saturday April 19, Walsh Bishop participated in the Minneapolis Earth Day Watershed Clean up at Lake Nokomis. Our group met early in the morning, clad in blue in support of Architect 2030’s No Coal Initiative; signed up, got our gloves and yellow bags and set out to clean up the park. Walking along the waterfront and along the beach the trash was plentiful. We picked up empty bottles, twist ties, cigarette butts and other various items.
One fitting, yet unexpected, benefit of doing the clean up was being treated to some excellent birding. We saw a variety of species that included Black-Crested Night Herons, Great Blue Herons, Terns, Gulls, Mallards, numerous diving duck species, and a Minnesota favorite - common Loons (who serenaded us all morning.) We also received many thanks from park users and were photographed by both the news media and the Minneapolis Park Board.
After our clean up efforts, those who braved the cold were treated to an all-organic bar-b-que sponsored by the WBA LEAP Task Team. The menu consisted of bratwurst, Kettle Chips and delicious homemade treats. And no, we did not use coal - it was a propane grill! A special congratulations to Paul Hand for picking up the most trash in our group! He received the winning prize basket consisting of a tire gauge, energy efficient light bulbs, and a DVD of CNN’s Planet in Peril.
See you in 2009!
Mix New American Diner, Chaska, MN
Mix New American Diner is scheduled to open next month, and frankly we couldn’t be happier about it. The dream of award-winning Chef John Pullis and wife Joan Howe-Pullis, it’s the culmination of years of hard work and planning behind the scenes.
It takes enormous effort and lots of talent to organize a small independent restaurant. Creating the concept, finding an architect, finding a builder, dealing with the bank, the city, the state, hiring staff and training them. And that’s if things go smoothly.
Walsh Bishop Design Leader Ed Wilms started conversations with John and Joan in 2005 about another concept that was also an outgrowth of their northeastern roots, but as fate would have it, that concept never came to fruition. In 2007 the duo found us again and we started planning Mix New American Diner. Our first meeting was filled with sketches, plans and concepts from an owner that had already put a tremendous amount of consideration into the look, feel and charm of the restaurant they wanted to create.
So far so good.
Start Construction and open up an almost 100 year old building and it’s full of surprises. Three original store front buildings were combined to create Mix, and of course not one floor level was the same. Open up the walls? Rot from bad additions and remodels that had happened over they years - water being funneled down from the ice dams on the roof creating mold problems, and walls that were quite frankly, barley standing up.
Working with longtime collaborators Zeman Construction, Walsh Bishop was able to help the owners navigate their way through the unexpected twists and turns of a very difficult construction. Hard decisions needed to be made because the pot isn’t full of money. Structural deficiencies need to be addressed, floors leveled, leaking roofs repaired and freezers refrozen. These hidden conditions of course weren’t accounted for in the original budget.
But, that’s behind us, and the end is in sight. Mix New American Diner is scheduled to open in just a few weeks, and as we’ve said before, we couldn’t be happier.
Mix New American Diner offers a menu full of unique twist on classic diner fare along with new additions that you can’t find anywhere else. A full bar complements the inviting atmosphere.
UPDATE: Check out Mix in the Star Tribune!
http://www.startribune.com/lifestyle/taste/20398854.html?page=3&c=y
Varsity Theater Project Update
When the Varsity Theater opened in 1915 as a vaudeville showplace near the campus of the University of Minnesota, no one could have known that 90 years later it would still house live performances and that in fact - it is the premier boutique venue for musical performance in the country – gaining rave reviews from performing artists and concert attendees alike.
The road to success was not without pitfalls and it’s only by shear determination and a relentless vision from Owner Jason McLean and Walsh Bishop Design Lead Ed Wilms that the Theater continues to delight audiences.
The rise of movies and vaudeville’s decline saw the theater’s conversion to a movie house in 1939 after an extensive redesign by the Minneapolis architecture and design firm Liebenberg & Kaplan.
Operating as a movie theater well into the 1980’s, the landmark Art Moderne marquee went dark after a failed attempt to convert it into a nightclub. An unfortunate renovation in the early Nineties gutted the auditorium to make way for a photographer’s studio, and ultimately left it sitting empty for several years.
McLean and Wilms knew they had found something special when they first viewed the empty shell – and McLean’s vision for the “Varsity Theater and Cafe des Artistes” was born. The goal was to create a flexible space that could house an art exhibit one day, a rock performance the next – and a wedding on Saturday. That vision is now a reality and an economic engine for the community. Renovation plans are again underway to take the theater’s capacity from 300 to 900 with expanded bar and catering facilities which will be completed Summer 2008.
Several years before their collaboration at the Varsity Theater, McLean and Wilms had incredible success renovating the old Grey’s Campus Drug Store into the now vibrant Loring Pasta Bar, transforming a dilapidated building into a destination restaurant and revitalizing a neighborhood.
ESOP Conference Energized and Educated
At Walsh Bishop, we think we’re pretty special for a variety of reasons, one of which is that on January 1, 2008 we became a 100% employee owned company.
Studies consistently show that companies that combine employee ownership with participation perform better than they did prior to implementing their ESOP and better than other similar companies without an ESOP. To encourge and foster this culture of ownership, an ESOP Committee has been appointed at Walsh Bishop. The committee’s first step is educating themselves on the implications, legalities, and possibilities of being an ESOP because like everyone at Walsh Bishop, they are new to the ESOP world.
Last week, three members of the ESOP Committee, Tina Brown, Andrea Samuelson and Joe Wagner, travelled to Chicago to attend the annual conference held by the National Center for Employee Ownership (NCEO). This conference was designed to provide learning and networking opportunities for ESOP companies and completely energized the three about the possibilities for Walsh Bishop. “We need to educate our ESOP Committee so that we, in turn, can educate everyone else” Joe said. “We are in the process of setting this commitee up in manner that will best serve our fellow employee-owners and foster a culture of ownership and leadership at all levels of Walsh Bishop.”
Attending events such as the national conference is just one of the many ways our ESOP Committee can connect with other ESOP companies and learn more about what it really means to be an ESOP company.
Earth Day 2008
Get Your Freak on With Walsh Bishop’s LEAP Task Team for Earth Day 2008.
On April 19, 2008 Walsh Bishop will be participating in the Minneapolis Earth Day Watershed Clean-up at
A little bit about the task team, Walsh Bishop’s LEAP (Leaders in Environmental Awareness and Protection) Task Team provides design solutions for current and future environmental issues by raising sustainability awareness throughout Walsh Bishop; maintaining an accessible “green” knowledge base and methodology for everyday implementation; and increasing firm efficiency through avocation of sustainable operational decisions.
