Mike Matuschka admits that out of practice, each time he will get out of his car or truck, he is nevertheless reaching for a mask in advance of going inside a business enterprise.
“Clearly, which is nonetheless on people’s minds all the time,” he claimed.
But two several years just after the pandemic begun — and a year just after it was the remaining straw that led to the closing of his having difficulties German beer hall in Rosemont’s amusement district — Matuschka is placing down roots and doubling down on his financial investment there.
He and his small business husband or wife, father Joe, have retooled and reinvented a portion of the cavernous previous Hofbräuhaus Chicago into a pizzeria and craft beer bar — a principle he believes will be more financially thriving yr-round.
At the same time, he’s hoping the pandemic is finally turning the corner into an endemic.
“Truthfully, I am 100% assured. I consider people today are not going to be set back in lockdown. I don’t feel folks are not likely to want to go out any more. They have been in for two many years,” stated Matuschka, who opened Crust Brewing at Rosemont’s Parkway Lender Park in February. “This village — this entertainment district — you happen to be not going to keep everyone down right here. Without the need of getting my crystal ball, I am 100% — this is going to be a property run.”
It can be a very similar amount of self-confidence expressed by many others who take care of or individual venues within just the 200,000-sq.-foot elaborate adjacent to the Tri-State Tollway — home to 15 dining and amusement venues — that could possibly have been the suburban poster boy or girl of how the pandemic affected the hospitality business.

























As they put together for the hotter spring and summer season months — when cost-free weekly live shows typically attract thousands to the park — the business proprietors are conversing far more like it is really 2019 once more.
“We’ve gotta double down. We’re there presently,” mentioned Kevin Killerman, who is operator or associate in many venues at the park. “You will find great eating places and amusement there. Where by else can you get free of charge parking and concert events and ice skating and stroll from location to spot? There’s so lots of alternatives.”
Killerman is part of a group of buyers purchasing the other element of the former 20,000-square-foot Hofbräuhaus from the village. He and Braden True Estate Chairman/CEO Marc Offit partnered with Texas businessmen Corey Urbach and Greg Sacony to carry Pete’s Dueling Piano Bar back again to the entertainment district.
The 5,800-sq.-foot piano bar opened April 1, as renovations are practically comprehensive on an adjoining 1,800-square-foot bar that will open up as Pete’s Tiki Tiki in May well.
The initially iteration of the piano bar opened in November 2019 in a various setting up in the entertainment district, but shut the next March amid the outbreak of COVID-19. Soon after a brief summer time 2020 reopening for outside dining and constrained indoor seating, Pete’s shut and was converted into the Verilife leisure marijuana dispensary, which is leasing the constructing from Killerman and Offit.
“It is really legal, and it really is a fantastic, protected position to go,” said Killerman, who claimed the variety of venues in the park provides some thing for everybody, “from 2 decades aged to 82 a long time outdated.”
Although making an attempt to maintain its loved ones-helpful daytime picture, the park has advanced since its opening a 10 years in the past to turn into a key Northwest suburban night time everyday living desired destination.
That is why Killerman and village officials had been self-confident in bringing back again the piano bar, which opened to massive crowds and social gathering bookings in 2019.
Following door, at the 13,400-sq.-foot pizzeria and brewery place the Matuschkas bought from the village — beforehand, they leased the overall setting up for Hofbräuhaus — the owners say they have had early success since introducing the new principle in February.
They have saved the brewing devices from Germany — nine massive fermentation tanks that confront the tollway outdoors, and eight serving tanks within — but usually completely transformed the inside. Crust’s menu has seven staple beers that are brewed on web page, and some two dozen Neapolitan-design pizzas.
Hofbräuhaus — a draw in September and October and on weekends, but peaceful on summer weeknights — could have been capable to survive, but in a scaled-down place, Matuschka reported.
Following an eight-year run with the German beer hall, he suggests he’s joyful how the new pizza and beer eatery is currently being obtained by shoppers.
“When was the previous time you were being heading out for German foods, and when was final time you went out for pizza?” Matuschka explained. “Regretably in this hospitality organization where the profit margins are slim sufficient, people today do not go out for German all the time.”