Landmark Forestville bar shuttered as structurally unsafe

FORESTVILLE

No one seems to know how long ago the street numbers got nailed above the door to the Forestville Club in the wrong order, but it’s not the kind of place where that makes a difference.

In this one-bar town, the long-established cocktail lounge is easy to find at the east end of Front Street, a small business district stretching three or four blocks before the two-lane road transitions back to the rural highway.

Two pink martini glasses punctuate the lighted sign that spans the front of the structure. The yellow letters stand out against a fading mural on two sides of the building, showing forested hills, a river cutting through them, a hillside vineyard and an orchard.

People go there to drink, see friends, hear music on weekends or even talk business. They find it despite transposed numerals above the door: “6250.”

But for the past four weeks, the entrance has been locked shut, the century-old building posted as unsafe to enter, based on a report on file with Sonoma County Code Enforcement citing numerous structural problems that could endanger occupants.

Lifelong Forestville resident and club owner Wayne Speer, 79, says he hopes to get permission to reopen and continue operating while repairs are made.

But he’s anxious about losing his livelihood and worried about employees who haven’t worked for the past month, as well as musicians who had been scheduled to play and won’t be performing.

The closure also has had a ripple effect on local businesses, primarily eateries, whose customers are also patrons of the bar, according to hair salon owner Wendy Gianni-Flowers, the chamber of commerce president.

The economic toll on the town has been “severe,” she said during a visit to her shop two blocks from the club.

“There’s a lot of people that frequent that bar on a daily basis,” said Marci Hill, a salon customer.

Speer said he believes the county over-reacted to large cracks and gaps in a rear concrete wall and in a retaining wall at the back of what was once a free-standing pump house.

It was later boarded in as if it were part of the main structure, though it’s not.

He says the concrete slab foundation of his building so far has endured earthquakes and even a car that last year slammed into the barber shop that occupies the corner space. “The foundation never moved,” Speer said.

But Speer, a soft-spoken, somber man whose family dates back 110 years in Forestville, wasn’t present to talk with a county inspector who arrived out of the blue June 19, pursuing a confidential complaint. A follow-up visit with a county engineer resulted in a finding that the building was unsafe to occupy.

Speer said he had no chance to elaborate on the eccentricities of a building that started out as an automotive garage around 1910 and was converted into a bar after Prohibition.

He might have explained double-layered walls and a rectangular breach in the rear of the building that was torn open to allow an enlarged sewer pipe to exit there. The interior structure was reinforced with 4-by-4-lumber to pick up the slack, he said.

“But see, it looks bad,” he said. “I don’t really think they’re safety issues. But I can sure see why the county thinks that.”

In an email Wednesday, a county spokeswoman identified significant concerns about the structural integrity of the entire building, saying the failing retaining wall and sliding hillside already had fractured the pump house foundation and threatened the main structure, as well.

A potential collapse on the building’s east side would compromise electrical and gas supply lines, raising the prospect of a fire or explosion, said Maggie Fleming, a spokeswoman for Permit Sonoma, the county planning department.

Speer tended bar as a young man at the club he now owns and later ran it as a favor for the last owner, Chuck Furia, for his final seven years of life. Furia’s will gave first dibs on the purchase to Speer, and he bought the club ?21 years ago.

Even then, some of the concrete wall was cracked and a chunk of the down-slope retaining wall was torn away from the hillside, jarred loose where a car crashed into it, Speer said.

Inside, the worn floral carpet and wooden wall panels speak to an earlier era, but the bar, pool room and dance floor still pulled in customers until last month.

“We’re really upset,” said Joel Hidahl, a local who has watched friends’ bands play the club and has performed there himself.

“It’s the last of the old roadhouse dive venues we have left,” he said.

Bing Chen, owner of Tahoe Chinese Restaurant at the other end of Forestville’s commercial strip, likened the loss to the closure in 2009 of Monte Rio’s Pink Elephant, a fixture in the river town since 1937.

“There’s a lot of memories for people,” Chen said.

Mike Flowers, 66, has done odd jobs for Speer, and said the community’s fondness for him makes the closure harder.

“Everybody likes Wayne,” he said. “He’s like the rest of us, getting up there in years. It’s his life.”

Gianni-Flowers, who is married to Speers’ nephew, and several other supporters met last week with Supervisor Lynda Hopkins, who represents the area, to see what could be done to allow the club to reopen sometime soon. Several people from Permit Sonoma were present, as well, and made it clear it was up to Speer to make the next move.

It’s unclear at this point what the club’s prospects might be and how long signs warning “DANGER” will remain posted. But a formal notice dated ?June 25 allows Speer just?60 days to submit drawings and plans for the repairs, as well as fees needed to apply for various county clearances.

A structural engineer he has hired to evaluate the building as well as a local civil engineer have both indicated they think the building is plenty safe to let the public in while repairs are underway, Speer said. But the structural engineer is working on a more detailed evaluation and report that he hopes will persuade the county he can reopen.

In the meantime, a notice near the door says that “Joe’s Day,” a memorial service Speer had planned for June 23 to honor one of his well-known regulars, a guy who came each morning for coffee, has been postponed “till future notice.”

It’s not been rescheduled.

You can reach Staff Writer Mary Callahan at 707-521-5249 or mary.callahan@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @MaryCallahanB.