For one of the few times since it opened 106 years ago, the Arctic Bar is changing.
Since 1910, a bar with a polar bear on its sign has occupied a tiny niche in downtown Juneau. Two years ago, the bar closed on a Monday and never reopened. Through dusty glass, tourists and locals alike could peer into the bar and see upturned stools and arrayed bottles waiting for an opening day that never came.
Now, that glass is covered by paper, and the bar’s new owner, Jared Curé, is preparing a new name and a new plan for the longtime Juneau business. But it’s not really a new plan — it’s an old one, used back before Prohibition, when the bar opened more than a century ago.
“I want to get back to using fresh ingredients, classic cocktails, new twists on classic cocktails, and get the mixology scene going up here,” Curé said on Monday, standing outside the front door of the bar with his sleeves rolled up.
“I think people are going to see we’re not just another bar downtown. We’re trying to bring in a clientele that’s underserved currently. My mom’s a teacher. Her teacher friends are not going to go to the Viking or the Imperial. There’s plenty of people, older, maybe professionals, that don’t want to get caught up in a younger, more rowdy demographic,” he explained. “I think a bar that’s catering to a higher-end, a little more catered experience, is going to do nothing but clean up downtown.”
But before he can clean up, he has to clean up.
Right now, Curé is renovating the interior of the Arctic Bar, exposing its original tin ceiling and walls put up when the building was erected. There’s a new bar coming from the shop of Curé’s father, woodworker Brad Curé.
By the time the bar reopens in October or November, it’ll have a completely new look, and a new name: The Narrows.
It’s a double entendre, a nod to the bar’s slot-like location at the corner of Franklin and Front Streets, and to the nautical lingo that appears on maps across Southeast Alaska.
Jared Curé, a 30-something, was born and raised in Juneau, graduated from Juneau-Douglas High School and left Juneau to go Outside. He worked in the San Francisco Bay Area’s booming technology industry and last year became interested when the Arctic Bar’s liquor license went up for sale.
State regulations distribute liquor licenses by population — but many licenses were grandfathered into that distribution when regulation was established in territorial days. By virtue of those grandfathered licenses, Juneau has many more licenses than normally allowed by law, and they tend to be closely held.
When Curé asked about the Arctic Bar’s license, he was told a deal was in the works to sell it to someone else.
“I stopped thinking about it and went back to normal life,” he said.
Earlier this year, he was contacted by the owner of the license and was asked if he still wanted it.
In about 30 minutes on a Friday, he had agreed to buy the license. He flew from Oakland to Juneau on a Saturday and met the owner at the bar on Sunday.
“My only goal right now is to get this place going and make sure it’s a success,” Curé said.
His goal is to create a comfortable place with an inviting atmosphere that welcomes customers willing to spend a dollar or two more on quality.
He’s not thinking of live music or a lot of visual distractions, but a place where the focus is on the drink and the conversation, a place where you don’t have to raise your voice to be heard.
Curé knows downtown Juneau has a problem with alcohol-driven vagrancy, but his goal is to not aggravate that problem. His bar won’t be a place that people go to simply to get drunk, he said.
“Our clientele, they’ve got work in the morning, too,” he explained.
Brad Curé said the most important thing Juneau should take away from the opening of The Narrows “is that here we have a born and raised Juneauite, and he moved away, and he’s come back to open up a business. I think that’s really what Juneau needs: to have the youth come back and do business here.”
• Contact reporter James Brooks at 523-2258 or james.k.brooks@juneauempire.com.
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