MORENCI — Running a pub in downtown Morenci is the realization of a longtime dream for Tony Muzzi … even though until recently, he’d never even heard of the town.

Muzzi is the new owner of the former Flats Pub at 113 North St., newly renamed the North Street Pub after a community contest that ended just before Christmas.

The Detroit native’s path to owning a bar in Lenawee County was not necessarily the journey you would expect.

“I went to Wayne State as a philosophy major, and I was bartending to put myself through college — and fell in love with restaurants,” he explained.

For the past 12 years he worked at The Whitney, a fine dining establishment on Woodward Avenue in Detroit. He was general manager for the last eight of those years.

“I’d do 30,000 steps in a three-piece suit on a Saturday night,” he said.

But that wasn’t what he really wanted.

“I always wanted to own a small-town, community-driven dive bar,” Muzzi said. “That’s been a goal of mine for 10 years.”

And being a dive bar, Muzzi said, is nothing to be ashamed of.

“When I say ‘dive bar,’ I mean a come-as-you-are, everybody’s welcome, no judgment, unpretentious watering hole,” he said.

His investment in Morenci began with an internet search.

“I googled ‘Bars for sale in Michigan,’ and this place checked all the boxes,” he said.

He wanted a bar that was already established and had an existing clientele. Check.

He wanted a bar that had positive cashflow. Check.

“And in a perfect world, it’d have an apartment upstairs for me to live in,” he said. Check again.

And finally, there was family. “I come from a very big, but also very close family,” he explained, and his aunt’s house in Pinckney is the nexus of family gatherings. So he didn’t want to be more than an hour and a half away from there. 

That final checkbox was all he needed. After visiting Morenci a few times, Muzzi said, he “just really fell in love with the place.” He signed the paperwork and became the pub’s new owner on Oct. 22 of last year.

He’s spent the last few months getting to know the community and figuring out what people wanted from their local pub. Muzzi said he’s lucky to have inherited a good operation from former owner Leslie Place, including the staff.

“Everybody has been incredibly welcoming,” he said.

One thing he’s learned about Morenci, he added, is that “people take a lot of pride in their community here, and everybody really looks out for each other.”

To get people involved in the future of the bar, he ran a contest to decide on its new name. Along with North Street Pub, the options were “The Pub,” “State Line Pub,” “The Bulldog Pub,” and “The Low Places Pub.” Customers got one vote for every drink they bought, and by the time the contest ended a few days before Christmas, more than 3,000 votes had been cast. 

The menu includes burgers, sandwiches, wings, salads, and appetizers. Two of the most popular items are “The Pub’s Famous Billy Bones” — fried breadsticks dusted with garlic salt and served with nacho cheese — and “Marsha’s Famous Gizzards.”

Though he doesn’t want to change much, Muzzi has added some things to the pub’s lineup, including rotating weekly food specials. Mondays are Manhattan Mondays, featuring specials on Manhattan sandwiches (an open-faced roast beef sandwich) and cocktails. Tuesdays will continue to be Taco Tuesdays. Wednesdays are all about meatballs, and Thursdays are for Reubens.

The North Street Pub has karaoke every other Friday and a DJ every other Saturday, starting at 9 p.m. On Wednesdays starting at 7 p.m., entertainment alternates between trivia and Name That Tune.

Another new offering is Civil Servant Appreciation Day on Sundays. “It’s for all the people who work hard and are underpaid to make sure we’re provided for,” Muzzi said. That includes police officers, firefighters, teachers, mail carriers, and municipal workers.

“They’re vastly underappreciated,” he said.

By taking over the pub now, Muzzi is four years ahead of the timeline he had set out for himself.

“My goal was to do this by the time I was 45, and I’m 41,” he said.

And this Detroit native couldn’t be happier to have landed at this small pub on the southernmost edge of Michigan.

“It is very much the quintessential small-town watering hole, which is exactly what I was looking for,” he said.

The North Street Pub’s hours are Monday through Thursday from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m., Friday and Saturday from 11 a.m. to 2 a.m., and Sunday from noon to 8 p.m. More information is available on Facebook at facebook.com/NorthStreetPubMorenci or by calling 517-458-6469.

A brief history of the pub

It’s likely no one alive today remembers the Pub building as anything but a tavern, but there’s more to its history than that. In 1914, a bakery was selling fresh bread to customers, with a drug store/grocery and a pool hall to the north.

By the early 1920s, a motion picture theatre had moved in, first known as the Temple and later the Princess. The theatre closed in 1929, but not before serving as Morenci’s first “talkie” movie house. Around the corner at the Gem (later the Rex), a piano player or small orchestra still accompanied the silent films.

By 1938 the North Tavern was in operation, owned by Ed Hodge who remained in charge for 38 years. Dewey Bright from Clayton was the next owner and he changed the name to the Pace Inn. Gary and Burt Valentine took over in 1980, selling to John and Carol Parker in 1987. That’s when the business became known as the Pub.

R.D. and Marcia Pierce took over in 1993 followed by Lucas and Leslie Place in 2018 with Flats Pub.

— David Green