Blue Ribbon Management, which has redeveloped a number of former Pabst Brewery buildings into venues like the Brewhouse Inn & Suites and Eleven25 at Pabst student housing, has opened a new 3,500-square-foot events venue in the Eleven 25 building.
The Barley Room, 1125 N. 9th St., occupies space on the first floor in the former Pabst Brewing bottling house, which was renovated in 2015. It has its own entrance on 9th Street, in the Brewery District.
The new venue – named for one of the main ingredients in beer (when malted) which will host a grand opening celebration on Thursday, Dec. 15 – can accommodate 235 guests in its space with big windows, exposed cream city brick and steel and polished concrete floors.
"The driving force behind this new space is providing our guests with a unique event experience in a historic setting," said Blue Ribbon Management Executive VP Michael Kelly, in an announcement Thursday.
The cream city brick German Renaissance Revival style building, which is on the National Register of Historic Places, is a sprawling structure that was erected in three phases, from 1889 until 1912.
It housed the bottling facilities for Pabst at a time when it was the largest brewery in the country. At its height, the bottling plant employed as many as 900 people.
The building is likely the work of Pabst-favored architects Otto Strack and/or Charles Hoffman.
In addition to the new event venue and residential units, the building is also home to a food court with five restaurants.
Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., where he lived until he was 17, Bobby received his BA-Mass Communications from UWM in 1989 and has lived in Walker's Point, Bay View, Enderis Park, South Milwaukee and on the East Side.
He has published three non-fiction books in Italy – including one about an event in Milwaukee history, which was published in the U.S. in autumn 2010. Four more books, all about Milwaukee, have been published by The History Press.
With his most recent band, The Yell Leaders, Bobby released four LPs and had a songs featured in episodes of TV's "Party of Five" and "Dawson's Creek," and films in Japan, South America and the U.S. The Yell Leaders were named the best unsigned band in their region by VH-1 as part of its Rock Across America 1998 Tour. Most recently, the band contributed tracks to a UK vinyl/CD tribute to the Redskins and collaborated on a track with Italian novelist Enrico Remmert.
He's produced three installments of the "OMCD" series of local music compilations for OnMilwaukee.com and in 2007 produced a CD of Italian music and poetry.
In 2005, he was awarded the City of Asti's (Italy) Journalism Prize for his work focusing on that area. He has also won awards from the Milwaukee Press Club.
He has be heard on 88Nine Radio Milwaukee talking about his "Urban Spelunking" series of stories, in that station's most popular podcast.
