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Setting Sail

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Richard Hertel, a longtime Sail Inn patron, hangs out in front of the bar Tuesday afternoon.

In the beginning, The Hut rested on Third Street and Mill Avenue and was like many downtown Tempe scenes of its time. It was a cozy and humble locally-owned bar, where neighbors spent afternoons knocking back six-packs of Keystone with full confidence that the bartender knew their name and their drink.

However, in 1976, the city of Tempe initialed its first redevelopment scheme and consequently bought out much of a contingency of local bars' land along Mill Avenue, causing The Hut to relocate to a spot out of the path of progress.

"The city bought out the whole block, and so the owners moved their bars," says Ed Whitman, a co-owner of the Sail Inn. "Back then, the city was trying to get rid of all the bars on Mill Avenue."

The Hut moved to Farmer Avenue and First Street, a nook of land just off of Mill Avenue. Almost 30 years later, while most Tempe residents have watched the downtown district slowly shift from a resident-oriented nirvana to a tourist wonderland, The Hut, now the Sail Inn, has retained its old, modest Tempe character.

Gina Vince, co-owner of the Sail Inn and bartender, says the establishment is proud of maintaining a neighborhood feel, which she believes is a rarity in downtown Tempe. "[The Sail Inn] reminds me of the bars I used to go to when I was in my 20s back in Wisconsin," Vince says. "It's not too fancy and it's not too pricey."

But again, like in the mid-'70s, as development consumes the land around the Sail Inn, the future of this neighborhood relic is in question.

"We're sort of getting isolated," Whitman says. "We're in this little corner and we're getting surrounded by development."

Changing Faces

With the rough and leathery profile of the Marlboro Man, Whitman, 63, says when The Hut first opened, it seemed like a scene out of the 1980 John Travolta flick, Urban Cowboy.

"It was the happening place in Tempe," says Whitman, a 1966 graduate of ASU and resident of the Phoenix area since 1946. "All the sororities and fraternities used to come here. Back then they had country music and mechanical bulls."

More than a decade later, in 1990, Whitman and two other partners bought The Hut and renamed it the Sail Inn anticipating that the Tempe Town Lake would take off. "The lake was supposed to be finished the year we bought it, but the city took another five or six years to complete the lake," Whitman says.

Over the years, he says, the Sail Inn has seen its share of changes, including the shift from a country bar to the "hippie" hangout it is today.

"We started with country bands, but now we have reggae and bluegrass bands," Whitman says. Surprisingly, even Whitman, a true Arizona cowboy, says he takes pleasure in the broad musical choices at the Sail Inn. But on a normal night at the Sail Inn, spotting a coarse character like Whitman is quite infrequent.

On any of the seven nights of the weeks one can stumble into the Sail Inn and find a realm of bead wielding, sandal-sporting long-hairs of all ages, twisting and gyrating to live music. If it weren't for the occasional mullet-haired patron, a trip to the Sail Inn could seem like a voyage back in time to the late 1960s.

While braiding a beaded necklace over the bar, Chris Gear says the kind of people that come to the Sail Inn are like no other bar-goers. "Most of the people that come to the Sail Inn you would never see anywhere else," Gear says. "These are not the kind of people you'd find on Mill Avenue."

More importantly, the diversity of music at the Sail Inn is what attracts many of the bar's carefree patrons. "This is the only place left in downtown Tempe for true hippie shit," Gear says, "I mean what other place in downtown Tempe would offer live bluegrass or reggae music?"

For some, like ASU graphic design senior Amy Martel, the Sail Inn's ambiance provides a sort of escape from what he says is a sometimes shallow ASU scene. "The people that come here are real," Martel says. "This is my little nook away from all the superficial bullshit around ASU."

Above all, Martel says, as a local musician she comes to the Sail Inn to hear what other local musical artists are experimenting with around Tempe. "The Sail Inn gives local bands the opportunity to play in front of people who really want to hear their music." Martel says. "And good local bands play at the Sail Inn."

Building a Community

Mark Gunn, drummer of the local band the Fatty Acids , says the Sail Inn provides an outlet for the Tempe jam-band scene to share music. He says that in the downtown area there's no place like the Sail Inn where true jam bands can perform. "It's great for the local music scene," he says.

For Pete Phimphavang, who has been playing at the Sail Inn for five years with a local bluegrass band, The High Grass Pickers, the musical community environment sets the establishment apart from the other bars.

"[The Sail Inn] has such a homey atmosphere," says Phimphavang, who lives a block away from the bar. "It is my home away from home."

The bar's community spirit has reached Phimphavang on a more personal level. Phimphavang, who works part-time at Dilly's Deli just blocks south of the Sail Inn, is expecting a child in a few months. With little financial resources to pay for the significant expense of a newborn baby, Phimphavang was in a daunting situation.

"I've been trying to find a full-time job, but it's really tough out there right now," Phimphavang says. Then, Gunn, whose Fatty Acids regularly play at the Sail Inn, approached Phimphavang about a musical benefit to help him out financially.

Phimphavang says the Sail Inn was more than willing to host the benefit, which will take place on Mother's Day. "This is all part of the community at the Sail Inn," Phimphavang says. "We really try to help each other out."

Sail Inners hope the bar's community is one that can endure the next wave of the city's massive downtown re-development campaign.

New Developments

As residential and commercial development continues to spread throughout downtown Tempe, Sail Inn patrons say they have noticed some subtle effects on their treasured neighborhood bar.

Less than a year ago, a high-priced condominium complex, Regatta Pointe, which now surrounds the Sail Inn, was completed. While Whitman says initial concerns about neighborhood cohabitation were raised due to the level of noise during outdoor music events, the condos' management was very flexible with the Sail Inn.

To Whitman's surprise, the developer, Picerne Commu-nities, even helped the Sail Inn deal with the outdoor music and caught many Sail Inners off guard.

"The developers gave us $15,000 to build a shell over our outdoor stage," Whitman says.

Longtime Sail Inn musician Mansaray Blue-Pony suggests that even though the developers have been accommodating, the Sail Inn has lost some of its charm because of their presence. "We used to be able to sit on the back wall naked," Blue-Pony says. "Of course, that ended when the condos came in."

Even with the cooperation of Picerne, Whitman, who has more than 25 years of real-estate experience in Tempe , is still cautious about the future intention of the city-backed developers. Whitman says the city has either bought or is arranging to buy most of the land surrounding the Sail Inn, which may not sound significant to the average Tempean, but for Whitman is all too familiar.

Over the past seven years of downtown Tempe's intense re-development strategy, Whitman has been forced out of two downtown properties. Most recently, three years ago, he was forced to shut down his Mill Avenue bar, Six East, to make way for the Brickyard on Mill.

"The city threatened eminent domain and forced me out," Whitman says. "I didn't own the land, so the city went to my landlord and said, 'We want your property, and we are going to redevelop it. You have to sell or we'll take you to court. And then the court will force you to sell.'"

Although, historically, eminent domain has been implemented to relocate structures in the path of highway or hospital construction, Whitman says Tempe has been known to use eminent domain to further drive corporate development.

"It's the way cities fuck over small businesses," Whitman says.

Neal Calfee of Tempe's redevelopment department says the development in the downtown area is not necessarily driven by Tempe, but by the situation the city is facing.

"Basically the city of Tempe is landlocked. We're 98 percent built in," Calfee says. "We're going to see more re-development wheth-er the city does it or the private sector does it."

Calfee says that the free marketplace will most likely dictate if there is better use for a piece of land even if there is something already existing there. According to Calfee, the city's recent development is a component of Tempe's intense urban development pattern. "It's a natural evolution for a downtown area to become a more intense urban environment because that is what downtowns are," Calfee says. "When you see something that is more urban - that is the evolution of our community."

Calfee says he envisions the city's plan as something positive for the Tempe community. "We want to create a 24-hour-a-day environment," Calfee says. "Over the past five years, we have seen a trend in people who want to come back to the urban core."

End of an era?

Back at the Sail Inn, Tempe residents aren't so optimistic about the city's plans. While sipping on a Keystone Light, Jim Link, who has lived in Tempe most of his 60 years, says Tempe is attempting big-city planning in a college town. "The city is trying to force a big-city environment, where it won't work," Link says. "The city needs to realize that Tempe is only going to get as big as ASU."

Although Whitman be-lieves Tempe will ultimately be successful, he says the cost of that success will be the loss of Tempe's once humble and inviting soul. "The city has lost the ambience that made it what it was," Whitman says.

As for the future of one of downtown Tempe's last neighborhood watering holes, Whitman says he can easily foresee the city moving in and eventually forcing the Sail Inn out. "That's how the city of Tempe operates," Whitman says.

Although Calfee says Tempe is not currently interested in the Sail Inn's plot of land, having learned a thing or two from past eminent domain encounters, the Sail Inn management believes it possesses a crafty form of protection. Vince says 12 years ago, when she and her partners bought the Sail Inn, they put it up for sale immediately, and The Sail Inn is still on the market through its realty company for $1.3 million.

"We did it to protect ourselves. Now if they want to force us out, they will have to pay what we want," Vince says. According to Whitman, if a business doesn't have a price out on its property, the city will pay "fair market value," which he says usually isn't fair at all.

Ultimately, Whitman predicts the days of the Sail Inn are numbered. "Eventually we will have to sell it," he says. For Sail Inn patrons, when and if that dreadful day comes, it will be the end of an era on the corner of Farmer Avenue and First Street. "If the Sail Inn closes, I would really question whether I could live in Tempe any longer," Gear says.

Phimphavang says that if the Sail Inn is forced out it would ravage the local music scene. "The small local bands would have nowhere to play in Tempe."

For Gunn, the Sail Inn represents one of the last respectable downtown Tempe bars that he isn't willing to see close.

"The Sail Inn represents an establishment that looks to the people first before the revenue."


The newly built condominiums Regatta Point now tower over the small, local bar, the Sail Inn, formally known as The Hut.


A group of regular Sail Inners gather on the porch at the end of their workdays to relax with friends and cold beer.


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