USA, IN: Barley Island Brewing to close for good on July 23

When the regulars at Barley Island Brewing call themselves a family, they mean it, the Indianapolis Star reported on July 13.

Many customers had their first drink or first date there years ago and are still coming in. Several met their future husbands and wives at the bar. They’ve attended each others’ weddings and funerals, held fundraisers when someone was sick and birthday parties when they were well.

“You can have a random conversation with a stranger and they become a regular, and then your best friend,” said Amy Gustafson, 38, who has been going to the bar for 17 years.

After 23 years near the Courthouse Square the family members are feeling a bit estranged. Barley Island owner Jeff Eaton announced he was closing the craft brew pub July 23. He said he couldn’t reach leasing terms to stay with the new owners of the building.

The closing is the latest in a surge of recent changes for some established businesses on the square as Noblesville races to redevelop downtown and entice new restaurants and shops to move in.

Kirk’s Hardware, a mainstay since the early 1950s, closed at the end of March. Owners Bill and Carrie Prater said they couldn’t find a buyer he trusted to keep it a hardware store. The owner of Syd’s Bar and Grill last month announced he had sold the family business after 77 years. The buyer said he plans to stay open as Syd’s — for now.

Though a 219-unit apartment building with storefronts named the East Bank is being built next to Barley Island, the bar's new owner said the development was not a factor in his decision. Mike Partin, who has an interest in historic preservation, said he wants to restore the old building and lease it, possibly as a restaurant.

Barley Island, at 639 Conner St., opened in 1999 as one of the first craft breweries in the state in an old building that was once home to a bar called the Livery and, before that, an actual livery.

It quickly became a favored spot for locals and features all the leading indicators of a lived-in neighborhood bar but not-quite dive: a stand-up cooler covered in beer stickers; snapshots of bar regulars in the mirror frame behind the bar; a random moose head above the bar that no one knows how to remove; a dark pool room with only the tables illuminated; an ornery front door that slams shut with a deep thud; a creaky music stage at the front window.

Rumors persist that the building is haunted. Legend has it a girl was hanged in the stable when the building was a livery and her ghost haunts the bar. Employees report lights flickering on and off, doors slamming shut and cans falling off shelves on their own, among other untraceable noises. Local ghost hunters make it an annual stop on their Halloween tours of haunted places and some regulars have been known to prank the tourists by jumping out of the shadows.

But customers said it was the living people that set the bar apart.

Its patrons and employees have hosted fundraisers for those in poor health or other causes, such as a camp for children with Tourette’s Syndrome. They’ve helped families nearing homelessness and fed local homeless veterans.

They watched out for each through the worst of the Coronavirus pandemic, keeping tabs on each other’s health during lockdowns.

“We all made it through Covid, but this has taken on its own life form,” said Beth Maxwell. “We are all in denial. We are shocked.”

Maxwell met her husband, Mike Maxwell, at the bar in 1999 when she went to see a Grateful Dead cover band there.

“We were married two years later,” she said. “I could name six or other married couples just like us. We never had kids so this is like our family, as it is to a lot of people.”

Jen Buzan started going to the brewery when she was 21 and quickly met her future husband, Mike. After their wedding reception in 2004 Morse Beach, the wedding party headed to Barley Inn — Buzan still in her wedding dress.

"It's just a super easy place to make friends," Buzan, 43, said. "It is one of the only places I, as a woman, felt comfortable going into alone."

When Mike Buzan had a stroke at the age of 33, the brewery's popular bartender, Michael Smith, convinced owner Eaton to hold a fundraiser for the Buzans. The Buzans had four children and Mike, a roofer, was their sole income.

Eaton donated a percentage of sales to the family and companies raffled items such as baseball game tickets. Bands played for free and 150 people attended, raising $10,000. "It was overwhelming," said Buzan, who barely knew Eaton, "it helped tremendously."

Amy Gustafson made her love connection at Barley Island in 2008, when a friend convinced her to come in for Open Mic Night. Brian White was a bartender at the time. He and Gustafson struck up a conversation and she began dropping in a few times a week to visit. They eventually became a couple and had a son, Miles.

When White died of an overdose in 2013, the support was already built in from employees and customers who knew him. They planted a tree for him in Forest Park. Gustafson has stayed a regular.

It is difficult to say if the new development is driving out the old because even on the historical square, businesses occasionally turn over. But since 2020, city officials said more than $145 million has been invested into redevelopment projects downtown, mostly large apartment buildings with first floor storefronts.

The owners of one of those newer business, Primeval Brewing, 960 Logan St., said in 2018 the burgeoning development convinced them to move to the square. That restored building happens to be owned by Partin, who bought Barley Island.

A few blocks west of Barley Island on Conner Street, the owners of 9th Street Bistro told IndyStar when they opened that the new Levinson apartment building across the street was one reason they moved in.


The apartment building being built next to the bar is the site of a former parking lot for employees at Hamilton County Government and Judicial Center. Those government workers used to pop in for after-work pint of Barfly IPA or Dirty Helen Brown Ale, where the bartenders had memorized their drinks and delivered them promptly.

“Yes and Yes,” they would answer before the bartender even asked the two essential questions. “Drinking?” and “the usual?”

Bartender Kaitlin Pettigrew, 31, said the other regulars still “come in like clockwork, sometimes just to check in but other times to stay all day.”

“Some of them don’t even drink,” she said.

Mike Corbett, a member of the Noblesville Preservation Alliance and occasional customer at Barley Island said “it’s a shame to see it go,” but doesn’t blame development.

“I know there will be some displacement but I don’t know if this is an example of it. I wouldn’t draw that conclusion,” said Corbett, a three-time candidate for mayor and a local publisher.

Corbin said it was vital the city retain downtown’s historic elements while acknowledging change is essential to make progress.

“I am in favor of bringing more people downtown but also of respecting the history and not tearing buildings down,” Corbett said.

The longtime patrons at Barley Island insist they are not opposed to progress, or new businesses, but said they’d like the see the old and new co-exist.

“I don’t have a problem with the new but finding places with character is hard to come by,” said Shari Robinson, who has been going to Barley Island for all 23 years. “You don’t have to go far to find any number of upscale and formulaic bars.”

Buzan agrees.

"I feel super sad it is closing," Buzan said. "I feel like Noblesville is losing its small town feel. The bar has a small town vibe you don't see anymore. You'd get off work or whatever and walk in there and everyone would be like 'Hey what's up?'"

Though Eaton also owns Deer Creek Pub and Bistro in Cicero, customers said it's unlikely many of them would migrate north to that spot after Barley shuts down July 23.

It just won’t be — can’t be — the same.

“Every place is different and what makes this different is the vibe and the heart and soul here,” said Shari Robinson said. “There are good people with good hearts. We like the way it feels. This is our ‘Cheers’.”

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