According to owner Russ Riseman, the Alehouse bar, one of Portland’s staple dives, will close in the wee hours on Sunday, August 20. The bar, which opened in 2000, has lately been involved in litigation with its landlord, Eric Cianchette. Cianchette’s company, ELC Associates, which owns the Portland Regency Hotel, sued the Alehouse in late 2005 for excessive noise. Riseman sued Cianchette in March of this year for an unrelated alleged breach of contract; Cianchette then counter-sued. Both sides settled the three lawsuits on Monday on terms which include Riseman voluntarily terminating his lease for the Alehouse. The settlement can be revoked if Cianchette or Riseman do not comply with this and other terms of the agreement by August 21.
“We reached a settlement that was mutually agreeable in the grand scheme of things,” says Riseman’s lawyer, Daniel Skolnik. “It could be a rosier picture for the Alehouse but circumstances have conspired to create a situation that wasn’t working.”
Riseman, reached Tuesday afternoon, said his decision to pack up and move is the result of a number of factors — including the city’s recent decision to triple the bar-stool tax and renovations Riseman says he would need to make to meet state fire code
“I have certain agreements through ongoing litigation that prohibit me at this point from giving too much information,” Riseman explains. “So I’ll tell you what I can tell you which is that we have made a voluntary decision to close our doors. We are not ending the business, we are simply looking for a new home, and our hope is to be in a new home in very short order. We fought valiantly for our life for quite some time and sometimes you’ve got to know when to fold ‘em.”
“I don’t want to say anything to embarrass the other side or to shake them up, but it’s settled on terms that we’re very happy with and we’re just waiting to see if the other side does what they’ve agreed to do,” says David Perkins, a lawyer at Perkins Olson, who represented ELC in the suits.
The Alehouse has tousled with ELC before. In 2001, Riseman’s landlord sued him to stop live music at the bar. ELC lost the suit.
The tiny basement bar has happily spent much of its six-year lifespan frozen in a beer-soaked time warp despite an Old Port that grows glitzier around it with every passing year. In a 2004, Stuff Magazine swung open the door to Riseman’s den and shone a flashlight down on its friendly dankness by awarding it an appropriately dubious honor as one of the nation’s “20 Best Dive Bars.” Visitors to the Alehouse could grab a cheap beer while lounging on swings hung from the ceiling, or gaze longingly at sketchy strangers through the window connecting the men’s and women’s bathrooms. Bands like the jam band Band Beyond Description and the metal queens Sinferno played there, many after tripping down the bar’s treacherously steep stairs during set up.
Riseman hopes to maintain the shadowy luster that was the Alehouse at a new venue, probably with the same name and the same décor, though everything is “up in the air” at this point. He ideally would like to rent a spot in Portland, but not in the Old Port, since he believes the city has put too much of a stranglehold on nightlife there.
