What started as a contingency plan to relocate the Aster Café has turned into the development of a second, bigger offshoot of the popular music eatery along Minneapolis' historic St. Anthony Main riverfront.
The café's owner, Jeff Arundel, plans to open a new, 200-person supper club called the Aster House over the summer in a historic two-story building one block northwest of the original Aster. His original 80-seat café is staying put.
Construction is already well underway on the Aster House, which Arundel said will be "a food-and-beverage destination first, and music venue second" -- with a more robust menu than the café's limited kitchen space will allow, plus a large patio area and a basement cocktail bar.
However, the musician-turned-restaurateur could not hide his excitement for hosting performances in the refurbished, 144-year-old stone-brick building. Look for concerts to begin in the fall a few months after restaurant service begins.
"It's going to be the greatest 200-seat music venue in the Upper Midwest," Arundel boasted.
The Aster House's features will include balcony seating à la the Dakota jazz club and a long, vintage-style bar on the main floor. Plans are to host national touring artists of varying genres there alongside local acts too popular for the more intimate Aster Cafe.
"When I think of all the great acts that can settle in and play two or three nights there, it seems limitless and exciting," Arundel said, recounting concerts that were held three decades ago in the building with his band and other groups.
"'Haunted' is the right word I've been by the memory of performing in here in the early '90s and how great it was. I know a lot of the other musicians who played here then would agree with me."
The stone-brick building in question is the Brown-Ryan Livery Stable, built in 1880 and originally located uphill from its current site at 25 SE. Main St. It was preserved and literally rolled downhill by construction crews in 1981 to make way for the neighboring Riverplace office and retail development, which is under new ownership.
Since its preservation, the Brown-Ryan structure has been used as a brewpub, dueling-piano bar and event space. Concerts were held there when the sprawling nightlife hub Mississippi Live was housed next door. In more recent years, U.S. Rep. Dean Phillips used it as offices for his business ventures.
Arundel bought the empty building last year for about $1.75 million with the intention of moving the Aster Café there. He said he was in the midst of a lease dispute at the time with the Rimarcik family that owns the long, brick building where the café is located -- also home to its adjoining River Room event space and the Main Cinema.
After resolving the lease issues, though, Arundel decided to keep the Aster Café as is and operate it alongside the Aster House.
"It dawned on us: Why not have them both?" he said. "They're going to be very different. The Aster [Café] now is this more intimate, cool, low-ceilinged thing, and this new place is going to bigger, more sweeping and dramatic."
The Aster House would bring new life to that scenic but struggling stretch of St. Anthony Main, where the former Vic's restaurant site has sat empty since before COVID-19, and the beloved Pracna bar space also has been mostly shuttered to the public. A recently opened coffee shop in the Riverplace site, Fragmnt, is already adding a new spark there.
A former CEO for Compass Inc., Arundel released rock albums under his own name in the 1990s while also flourishing as a businessman.
His company produced such events as the Mill City Music Festival, and his Lifescapes record label churned out relaxing nature sound CDs sold nationwide at Target stores. He performs in the band the Scarlet Goodbye with former Soul Asylum guitarist/co-vocalist Dan Murphy. He also owns and operates Jefe Urban Cocina and the building it's in a few doors down from the Aster Café.
