Alary’s Bar in downtown St. Paul to reopen with new owner

Jess Fleming, Pioneer Press
·4 min read

Alary’s Bar, a fixture in downtown St. Paul since 1949, is coming back.

The bar, which has been through many changes since its inception as a burlesque club, closed in June of 2023. Rumors at the time were that there was a new owner and that the concept would change.

We now know who the new owner is, and fans of the Chicago Bears bar will be happy to know that it will continue to be Alary’s and will operate a sports bar.

Bill Collins, owner of Camp Bar on Robert Street, has purchased the art deco building, and as a Chicago native, plans to change very little.

“I actually grew up in Chicago, and my family were season ticket holders for the Bears,” Collins said.

The theme fits with the original ownership, Collins said. Alary’s is a portmanteau of Al and Larry. The Al refers to Al Basai, who played guard for the Chicago Bears in the 1940s. He partnered with Larry Lehner to open the bar in 1949.

Collins, who is now a Green Bay Packers fan (Camp is an official Packers bar), thinks having two bars with rival fandoms will offer some fun opportunities.

“We could do traveling trophies; there are a whole lot of things we can do,” Collins said. “In the big scheme of things we are living in Vikings territory, so we are both sort of like the red-headed stepchildren.”

Besides American football, Collins plans to embrace the European version — soccer. And of course, the Minnesota Wild. Plans are in place to fire up the shuttles that used to run to Wild games to run to Allianz Field for Minnesota United games and St. Paul Saints games at CHS Field, too.

The bar offers free parking in the Block 19 Ramp (one door east) weekdays after 4 p.m. and all day on weekends. They are also in the process of finalizing a deal to offer parking in the adjacent lot at the rear of the building.

The most recent owners put in a sizeable kitchen, and Collins, who is a bar guy, not a restaurant guy, said he’s hoping to find someone to run the kitchen as a separate business that will, of course, serve the bar. It’s big enough that someone could operate a ghost kitchen or catering business out of it as well. For now, he said, they’ll serve the most ubiquitous Minnesota bar food — Heggie’s Pizza.

As far as the decor, besides sports gear, Collins plans to lean into the history of the place.

“We have 75 years’ worth of memorabilia on the upper floors,” Collins said. “We have historic photos of downtown, vintage neon, bar and restaurant photos — we plan to display a lot of that. If you’ve got a bar with this much history, it’s nice to have some of that stuff around.”

And the iconic stuffed Chicago Bear is coming back, too. Sportswriter and Bears fan LaVelle Neal from the Star Tribune had it, Collins said, but has returned it to its rightful home.

They’ll also be upgrading the audio/visual equipment so that watching games from Alary’s is a better experience.

The bar held a successful pop-up during St. Patrick’s Day, and Collins said he was glad to find that everything still worked well. They’re planning another pop-up during the Frozen Four during the weekend of April 10-13. Hours will be 3 p.m. until midnight, and shuttles will run continuously April 11 from 4 to 11:30 p.m. and April 13 from 5 to 9 p.m.

If everything goes well, Alary’s will be back up and running full time in May, just in time for patio season. The bar has a sizeable back patio that will be landscaped and ready to go as soon as possible.

Collins said he couldn’t be more excited to own one of the legacy businesses that define St. Paul.

“This is a name that’s been around for 75 years,” Collins said. “I think that’s one of the things that sets St. Paul apart is that there are all these places that have been around for so many years.”

Alary’s: 139 E. Seventh St., St. Paul; facebook.com/AlarysBarMN

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