Omaha Exploration

Located at 4016 Leavenworth Street, the old brick building that was the longtime home to Pauli’s opened as Charlie’s Blue Room in 1938. Charles and Edith Mogil operated 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 on the Leavenworth Street sidewalk in front of the bar. Designed to advertise it as the place to watch Cubbies games, the logo caught the attention of an ESPN television crew who happened to be in town to cover the College World Series.

Pauli’s started a tradition of giving the television crew t-shirts, which got them past the lines and also served as free advertising 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. In exchange for the hospitality, the crew hooked the bar up with tickets to sporting events.

The CWS hot spot soon began attracting not only the television crew and baseball fans but also players, coaches, school officials and even umpires, though 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 parking lot being fenced off to contain the overflow, which at times exceeded 3,000 people partying inside and beneath the tents.

Pauli’s bar, like the stadium where 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 with one specific team, Pauli’s was a fan-friendly gathering spot welcoming to all baseball fans. To keep up with the crowds, he doubled the size of the bar in 1999 by expanding into the bay on the west, then grew 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. The fact that it was even the CWS go-to spot in the first place was something of an aberration, though it likely benefited from the limited options near Rosenblatt. When the series moved, the new stadium came with 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 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. There were no beer gardens, tents or shuttle buses. The building was demolished in 2013 to make way for the continued expansion of the University of Nebraska Medical Center.

Paul, however, continued to operate Omaha’s first satellite bar, Pauli’s at the airport, and briefly reopened at the River City Star during the 2013 CWS before settling on a permanent spot in the new Aksarben Village. The location proved perfect, sitting near the growing University of Nebraska at Omaha campus and the brand-new Baxter Arena across the street. It was well positioned to draw college students, sports fans and others visiting the area for a concert, farmer’s market or a meal.

Paul opened at the new location on the first floor of the Pacific Life building at 6750 Mercy Road in 2015. He 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 still draws its share of Cubs fans.

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Sources

• https://fox42kptm.com/archive/famous-cws-bar-closing
• The Reader, 2019
• Omaha World-Herald archives