NEWS
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.
