Republican wins 25-year battle to tear down beloved neighborhood bar

The oldest family-owned bar in Madison, Wisconsin, poured its last drinks for customers this month. For more than nine decades, the Silver Dollar Tavern served “everyone from the gutter to the Governor’s office,” according to locals.

Now, the bar is shuttering after a multi-decade campaign to buy and demolish the bar led by a Republican who's now campaigning for a seat in the U.S. Senate.

Eric Hovde, the CEO of Hovde Properties, is challenging Wisconsin Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin for her seat in his second bid for a place in the Senate. He lost the 2012 GOP primary to then-Gov. Tommy Thompson.

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Hovde's family first took aim at the bar in the late 1990s. After the owners of the bar refused to sell, a decades-long pressure campaign was launched, Rolling Stone reported.

Hovde's father, Don, first made a bid for the building more than 25 years ago after he purchased neighboring sites on the same block. The co-owner at the time said the offer was refused because it was too low, Rolling Stone reported.

That set off what many saw as a campaign to force them out which included a proposal in 2020 to tear down the other buildings on the block and make the bar an island in the middle of a parking lot. That was rejected by local officials.

Instead, the other buildings stood empty and neglected, turning the block into a rundown area, Rolling Stone reported.

And then, last November, the bar's owner announced it was closing and Hovde could buy it. The terms are protected by a non-disclosure agreement, Rolling Stone wrote. Hovde announced plans to tear it down.

Late last year, Hovde’s real estate company finally announced plans to demolish the Silver Dollar, but it has not announced what it wants to do with the location. There are rumors that Chuck Teasdale, the fourth-generation owner of the bar, plans to reopen the bar in a different location.

Longtime Silver Dollar customer Josh Napravnik has mixed feelings about the bar's closure.

“I’m somebody who generally is pretty pro-development and anti-nostalgia,” he said, adding that Hovde Properties handled the situation badly. “This is somebody who left properties derelict for [more than] 24 years, just waiting for the right payout.”