Restaurant owner Harry Saites' recently retooled marketing strategies have some East Lansing council members and city officials questioning their decision to support his liquor license approval.
In numerous East Lansing City Council and planning commission meetings since the beginning of the year, Saites and his attorney, George Brookover, expressed that his adjoining restaurants, Lou & Harry's Five Star Deli and LH Grille Room, would not become bars and would maintain their dedication to fine dining.
Thursday afternoon, less than a month after Saites finally received the license, the front windows of Saites' adjoining restaurants are emblazoned with happy-hour drink specials and frozen daiquiri prices.
In a Lou & Harry's ad placed Wednesday in The State News, the restaurants advertised J?ger Bombs and tequila shots underneath a banner reading, "Guess Who Got Their Liquor License?!"
At a City Council meeting Wednesday evening, Councilmember Vic Loomis addressed the ad, saying he felt "disappointed" and "broadsided."
Loomis listed drink special after drink special, and Mayor Mark Meadows expressed similar disappointment.
At meetings in January, Brookover stressed that the LH Grille Room was one of the only restaurants in the downtown area to serve "real mashed potatoes."
"If my wife and I are walking downtown on a Friday night, and we want to have a sandwich, we might like to have a beer," Brookover said about the restaurant.
Many downtown business owners had opposed Saites' liquor license with a petition to the City Council of more than 50 signatures, asking council members to reject the request for the establishments, located at 235 and 245 Ann St.
On Wednesday, the council approved another liquor license request for India Palace, 340 Albert Ave., but Loomis said he had reservations about doing so. He asked the restaurant's owner, Phagwan Chaudhary, to promise that his restaurant would remain food-oriented and not alcohol-oriented.
"I just heard a man stand where you were a month ago and tell me he was going to run a restaurant," Loomis told Chaudhary at the meeting. "We continue to be upset by this."
Loomis also said that if India Palace employed the same advertising practices as Saites, he would never approve another liquor license in the city.
Saites refused to comment on the advertising, but Councilmember Beverly Baten said at the meeting that she had talked to Saites and he had said he knew nothing of the ads before they were printed. Brookover also refused to comment, adding that he hadn't seen the ads.
"Part of the plan for redeveloping the downtown is to get restaurants in and serving alcohol, and I'm all for that," Loomis said. "I was hoping that what we created was a restaurant with a focus on food that serves alcohol.
"This shows that there is a focus on alcohol with food as an afterthought."
East Lansing police Chief Louis Muhn said he was surprised to open the newspaper and see the ad so soon after Saites received his license.
"Am I concerned when I see this ad for drinks every day of the week except Sunday?" he asked. "Of course I am."
Muhn opposed Saites' license approval, as well as all other downtown requests, saying the police don't want an environment where people can abuse alcohol.
But David Ladd, the owner of Earport, 301 M.A.C. Ave., said he wasn't surprised at the changes in marketing.
Ladd said these were the reasons he signed the petition trying to halt Saites from receiving his license. He feared adding another downtown drinking spot where students could get drunk.
"You don't have happy hour for six days a week for people who want a glass of wine when they eat dinner," Ladd said. "It goes to show it's exactly what he was doing all along.
"He's just gone to it a lot faster than we thought."
Don Jordan can be reached at jordand3@msu.edu.
