The city Redevelopment Authority, which owns the old Reading Headhouse where Independence had operated for the past six years, said the restaurant's owners owed close to $800,000 in back rent.
"It's anybody's guess why it failed," said spokesman Frank Keel.
Well, here's one guess: The owners didn't have a clue.
Independence Brew Pub is owned by a group of investors, called GS Capital, who picked apart the bones of the original Red Bell brewpub that was supposed to open in that spot in 2000. Those investors created a subsidiary called DS Holdings II - made up of former investors in the failed Dock Street brewpub on 18th Street - to hold the liquor license. And that group hired a third company, a Washington, D.C., restaurant management firm called Sam & Harry's, to run the place.
It was a money deal. Good beer was completely secondary, and it showed.
Independence was the closest place to the Convention Center to get a drink (not counting the grimy little beer garden at the Reading Terminal Market), yet you hardly knew it was open, lurking in the shadows of Filbert Street. At lunchtime the place would be empty, while the Hard Rock Cafe was packed to the gills.
The food was uneven and service was a joke. But its worst sin was the beer. Roberts brewed a nice line of hand-crafted ales, yet the boneheaded operators undercut him by also serving the likes of Miller Lite, thus devaluing the one thing that made the place special.
It's no wonder they couldn't make the rent, which I'm told was as high as $43,000 a month.
Keel said the RDA called in the sheriff after GS Capital failed to gain additional financing from the U.S. Small Business Administration.
Bill DeMarco, one of the DS Holdings II investors who holds the brewpub's liquor license, declined to comment.
Keel said the RDA is already talking to other potential investors, which he declined to name.
