“When you’re in Best Place, you sort of forget what’s going on in the rest of the world.”

Jim Haertel is the owner of Best Place at the Historic Pabst Brewery, and the Best Place tour guide for Doors Open Milwaukee 2023. Jim entertains his tour participants with enlightening stories of Pabst history, insight on renovation complications and a guided tour through the old Pabst corporate offices and the Blue Ribbon Hall. Restoring and maintaining the beauty of the building is a passion he is happy to talk about.

Chevy Miller: Jim, what do you do here?

Jim Haertel: I am the Chief Steward. Some would use the title “owner” or “president.” We sort of feel like a steward takes care of your valuables for a while, so we feel like we’ve been given this responsibility to take care of this for a while, so we are the stewards of this building, and I am the Chief Steward and historic tour guide. We love the history here.

Chevy Miller: You mentioned earlier that you were born and raised in Milwaukee?

Jim Haertel: Yes, I was born at St. Mary’s right by the Water Tower. When I was born, I made the house too small, so we moved from 33^rd and Capitol to 55^th and Locust, and then a few more kids, moved to 88^th and Lisbon by Champion Chicken, and now my family and kids, we moved last into Wauwatosa by 117^th and North, about 15 minutes from downtown here. And we saved another historic building between here and Wauwatosa. A 1920 School of Agriculture building that was going to be torn down. We took some of the profits we made here to save that building, and those are our two historic preservation projects.

Chevy Miller: What is it about this building in particular that you’re so drawn to?

Jim Haertel: This is a piece of Americana. This is a flagship brewery from the largest brewery in America for 100 years. There were 28 buildings over seven blocks, and in their good days, they did so much good for the community and philanthropy, charity, and in the end, there was a hostile take over and people really did stuff to tarnish the Pabst name. They damaged stuff with retirees, employees, the unions, and the Pabst name was dirt here from ’85 to ’96 to 2000. And then there was talk about shutting down and tearing it all down. And I just thought, “I have been in Blue Ribbon Hall,” and very ornate hall, you’ve seen it Chevy. I mean, it’s in a 1858 school, they remodeled it in 1940 and turned it into a 17^th century German beer hall. I mean, it’s fantastic. People get married there, and I had been in there just one time, and I hear of talk of tearing it down and I just said, “that would be a travesty. This has got to be saved!” And all the people with money just thought oh, that’s just Pabst, I don’t want to get involved with Pabst. Bad name, old building, it’s off in the corner. Nobody wanted to touch it, and that was to my advantage, because I remember the good days, saw the possibilities of the architecture and I just believed that if we got past the bad news and reminded people of the good times, we can enjoy the good times again and share it with Milwaukee; and so many people come to Milwaukee and they want to do three thing… they want to go on a brewery tour, they want to see the Safe House and they want some Wisconsin fried cheese curds!

Chevy Miller: And maybe a brandy Old Fashioned too. Maybe.

Jim Haertel: (Laughs) And maybe a brandy Old Fashioned, but that’s more of our thing here. They don’t even know about them. Once they try one, they’re like, “Oh man! Now I see why you’re into these things.” Everybody else does whiskey Old Fashioneds. Milwaukee, Wisconsin, we drink more brandy than anybody.

Chevy Miller: Yes, we are the number one consumer of brandy.

Jim Haertel: Yes! 

Chevy Miller: Throughout the world, I think.

Jim Haertel: Probably! We got brandy Old Fashioneds, but we drink a lot of beer too!

Chevy Miller: What has Doors Open Milwaukee done for you as far as recognition on the work you’re doing to the building?

Jim Haertel: That’s a good question. We love Doors Open because we’ve done it every year. Number one, it gives us exposure. I can’t tell you how many people come and do the tour and Doors Open and say, “I never knew this was here. I’m glad we came, we’ll be back!” So, number one, it’s great exposure and great for our business. Number two, it forces me to come up with something new every year. Cause every year, we’ve come up with something new for, it seems like ten years. I don’t know how long they’ve been doing it, but we’ve done it every year, and every year we got a new something. This year was the 3^rd floor boardroom with a couple of ballrooms and a speak easy for extra credit. We showed last year’s 2^nd floor future museum, we talked about a beer bed and breakfast with beer on tap in your room. I mean, the possibilities are endless. I just takes money and time and…

Chevy Miller: Love?

Jim Haertel: Passion.

Chevy Miller: It takes a lot of love, too.

Jim Haertel: It does. And we are known for being very patient, yet very persistent and certainly passionate. Some people are like, “why isn’t this fixed?” It’s because we only have so much money and so much time, we’re little people that are taking on a gargantuan project. And how do you eat an elephant, Chevy?

Chevy Miller: One bite at a time?

Jim Haertel: One bite at a time! We’re taking one room and one window and one door at a time you know. What month is it, what are we working on now? And every once in a while we’re ready to do something, then all of the sudden we gotta do something else because old buildings all the sudden a leak pops up, or a brick falls out. So, there’s always something; and then you have weddings. Imagine a couple of weddings with like 100 people here and 300 people there drinking then all of the sudden it’s like…

Chevy Miller: Something gets broken…

Jim Haertel: Ope, the toilet is clogged, ohhh the window is clogged, oh the caterer ran in and broke a leaded glass window. They’re gonna pay for it, but now we gotta find a guy that can replace a leaded glass window! Then they find out what it cost to replace. A normal window, 30 to 50 bucks. Leaded glass window, 300 to 500 bucks. We once spent a lot of money to replace one hand blown piece of glass cause all the panes were hand blown glass we thought. And after we spent the money, the guy tapped one of the panels and said, “This is plexiglass!” He said this was plexiglass! We were like, oh wait, we didn’t even know this, we could have just put plexiglass in, but we put in a nice hand-blown glass pane.

Chevy Miller: (Laughing) Well, at least it was more historically accurate.

Jim Haertel: Yes! Someday, we’ll replace that Plexiglass. And you look through some of the windows, and some are modern, but then some you’ll see the wave in the glass that shows it’s really old windows even.

Chevy Miller: I love it. The bubbles in the glass and things like that.

Jim Haertel: Rich people would have taken all the windows out, properly insulated them, put new windows in. And it would button it up, and help the environment to preserve some utilities, but we didn’t have the money. So, we buttoned it up the best we could, then we heated it as best we could, but a lot of it leaks out in this old building. And it costs 4-5 grand a month to heat it in the winter. People are like, is that all? (Chuckles) We don’t do anything on the 2^nd and 3^rd floors! All we do is take care of a little bit of the 1^st floor.

Chevy Miller: And it still cost you $4000 to $5000 a month in the winter.

Jim Haertel: Yeeeehhhh.

Chevy Miller: Well Jim, my last question for you is… As far as you know, what is the furthest distance someone has travelled to attend one of your tours?

Jim Haertel: We ask people at the beginning of the tour where they’re visiting from, and we get people from all over the world. If anything, we’re like, why aren’t there more people from Milwaukee or Wisconsin. We tend to get a ton of tourists. They don’t come here to come to the Best Place. We know that. They come to Milwaukee, and they have a reason, and they want to do some fun stuff, and we’re one of the top ten things to do, if not one of the top three. People want to goon a brewery tour, they wanna see the Safe House, they want Wisconsin fried cheese curds, and that brandy old fashioned  and a bratwurst. Well, I’m happy to say us and Lakefront Brewery are the two highest rated brewers, and we’re not even a brewery anymore. We’re actually a beer history tour. And only one out of 1000 people are like, what a bummer. I thought we were going on a brewery tour. Where’s the kettles, where’s the making of the beer? And it’s usually some buzzed person that’s looking for a typical brewery, because the other 999 people say, I was ready for a typical brewery tour, then I got this, and this is the best tour I’ve ever been on. The history, the architecture, the story… a little family… commercials form the 50’s and 60’s…

Chevy Miller: You did a good job capturing our attention right away with the commercials. Good job!

Jim Haertel: Yeah, it just takes people back. What we love… when you’re in Best Place, you sort of forget what’s going on in the rest of the world. And that’s good you know. The next thing I would like to do is fix what’s going on in the world and make everyone get along. Because that’s what we do here. We get Chicago Bears fans here. Chicago loves this place, and we love Chicago’s money, and we all get along. We say, look. It’s not Bears and Packers, it’s not Bucks and Bulls. It’s beer! We all like beer. We all come together in the spirit of beer.

Chevy Miller: Jim, it was a pleasure interviewing you. Thank you so much.

Jim Haertel: Thank you as well, Chevy.