Omaha Exploration

Located at 4016 Leavenworth Street, the old brick building that was the longtime home to Pauli’s – the CWS hot spot for decades – opened as Charlie’s Blue Room in 1938. Charles and Edith Mogil operated the the restaurant and dance club until 1962.  After that it became the Playmaker Lounge until 1978.

By 1982 Paul Griego moved in and opened a quiet neighborhood bar called Pauli’s. That changed dramatically in 1984 after its owner painted a Chicago Cubs logo along Leavenworth Street in front of the bar. Designed to advertise it as the place to watch Cubbies game, the logo caught the attention of the ESPN television crew that happened to be in town to cover the College World Series. 

Pauli’s started a tradition of giving the television crew t-shirts allowing them to bypass the lines but to also advertise the bar during the annual baseball tournament at Rosenblatt Stadium. It worked better than Paul could have ever imagined. Soon college baseball fans were visiting the bar hoping to rub elbows with the likes of Harold Reynolds and Dan Patrick among others. In exchange for the hospitality, the crew at the bar received tickets to sporting events. 

The CWS hot spot soon began attracting not only the television crew and baseball fans alike but also players, coaches, school officials and even umpires (the umpires were banned from doing so in the mid-1990s). Despite not being particularly close to the stadium, it continued to draw larger and larger crowds. That led to the fencing off of the parking lot to contain the overflow crowd which at times exceeded 3,000 that partied inside and beneath the tents. 

Paul’s bar, like the stadium in which the games were played, was a little rough around the edges which only added to its charm. Perhaps the only bar in town not aligned to one specific team, Pauli’s was a fan friendly gathering spot accepting of all baseball fans. To accommodate the large sizes, he doubled the size of the bar in 1999 when it expanded into the bay on the west. He expanded it again when the Pet O’ Mine shop on the east closed in 2004. 

The summer party at Pauli’s continued until Rosenblatt was replaced with the new ballpark downtown in 2011. That event marked the end of an era for Pauli’s. The fact that it was even the CWS go-to spot in the first place was an aberration but it likely benefited from the fact that there were limited options near Rosenblatt. If you had to hop in a car to drive someplace before or after the game, it might as well be Pauli’s. When the series moved downtown, the new stadium provided a plethora of options all within walking distance, not to mention restaurants, hotels and other amenities. 

Paul saw the writing on the wall and sold Pauli’s to a pair of regulars, John Steichen and Dave Eckley. After a renovation, they renamed it as The Recovery Room. While it remained a Cubs-friendly sports bar and even dedicated a wall to the Creighton Bluejays, it made no attempt at continuing its tradition as a CWS hot spot. That meant no beer gardens, tents or shuttle buses. The building was demolished in 2013 to make way for the continued expansion of the Med Center. 

Meanwhile, Paul continued to operate Omaha’s first satellite bar, Pauli’s at the airport and considered reopening the bar in another location. That included a brief run at the River City Star during the 2013 CWS. He settled on a permanent location in the new Aksarben Village. The location proved perfect as it was near the growing University of Nebraska at Omaha campus and its new arena, Baxter, across the street. The location would be able to draw college students, sports fans and others visiting the area for a concert, farmer’s market or a meal. 

He opened in the new location on the first floor of the Pacific Life building at 6750 Mercy Road in 2015. Paul made some attempts to replicate the original spot with a similar size, layout and U-shaped bar. No longer the popular summer gathering spot it once was, this new iteration of Pauli’s is more of a neighborhood sports bar that continues to draw its share of Cubs fans.

2024 Omaha Exploration photo of the new Pauli’s in Aksarben. It’s still a Cubs friendly bar.

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