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The Retreat charges back in style

By RICK GERSHMAN
Published February 2, 2007

The two women were still good friends, more than three decades after graduating from the University of Tampa.

Back then, one could legally drink at 18. So it's not surprising that many collegiate memories began at the bar across the street: the Retreat.

They hung out there. They drank and played games there. They met Gasparilla Invasion mornings at 7:30 to begin the festivities, back when the parade route passed right by the bar, along Hyde Park Avenue.

Patty Menendez and Judy Scott-Alvarez graduated in 1974 and moved on with their lives. Over the years, the Retreat turned into a dive. Eventually, the bar became another lounge, the Mouse Trap.

Either way, same deal: another dive.

On Tuesday, the women returned. They had heard the Retreat was back.

"It's beautiful," Menendez said. "I can't believe my eyes."

She doesn't know the half of it.

The return

The Retreat, which opened in 1938, is back indeed.

Sort of.

It has the name. It has the cool, iconic mural, a staple since 1946, which depicts a colorful rogue's gallery of drunks. It retains the character of this 1920s-era building, at Hyde Park Avenue and Grand Central Boulevard.

And owner Rick Calderoni, branching out from his successful Green Iguana restaurants, has renovated inside and out to give it a 1940s retro feel.

Calderoni gutted the Mouse Trap and started basically from scratch, removing every last aspect of "dive" from one of the most divelike bars in Tampa.

Now, it's pristine. Three high-definition televisions hang above the back bar. The floor's new. The bar's refinished. The look will extend to a planned Retreat full-service restaurant next door.

It's nothing like the old-school Retreat, which in its later days became a haven for day laborers and the homeless. Calderoni's shooting for a new clientele, and it's not the UT crowd.

"The majority of students are under the age of 21, so that's not really our market," he said.

The bar will be 21-and-up, and the restaurant will be 21-and-up after 10 p.m.: "That's what we've always done at the Green Iguanas, and we've never had a problem with underage drinking."

Instead, Calderoni said, he's hoping the Retreat will attract professionals.

It's right across the river from downtown, a nice midpoint for business people going home to tony Hyde Park and SoHo neighborhoods.

Calderoni also owns the 2,700-square-foot space next door, which was Mirta's CoffeeHouse Gallery until last fall.

That's slated to become the Retreat restaurant. He plans to keep the restaurant and the bar open until 3 a.m.

Calderoni and his partners also bought Cafe European, on the building's northeast corner, to serve breakfast and lunch.

But these plans hang on a critical wet zoning request that goes before the Tampa City Council Feb. 15. Right now, the Retreat can only sell beer and wine. The rezoning would allow full liquor.

The city's been tough on wet zoning applications lately, but Calderoni feels good about his chances, having built support with the neighborhood associations, police and city officials.

"We're trying to redevelop the area," he said. "We're making something really nice out here."

A long history

It was only the third post-Prohibition tavern in Hillsborough County.

By the early 1990s, the bar was frequented by few but the destitute and the long-past-destitute.

It sold no food, no wine, no spirits. Just beer.

Homeless patrons paid for their 75-cent drafts with money earned minutes earlier by donating plasma at a center up the street.

Violence rarely was a problem, according to patrons. The one time something awful did happen, it involved a stranger.

It was two days before Halloween, 1995.

A man entered the bar with a gun, demanding money. Gary Peters, a homeless man who frequented the bar, tried to intervene and was shot. Peters, 48, died a few weeks later.

Dilip Silva of Fort Myers, 23, was captured after a police gunfight. He was sentenced to life.

Not long after, the bar became the Mouse Trap Lounge.

It had its defenders.

Last year, a tbt* reviewer championed the Mouse Trap's incredibly cheap prices, its "strange mix of alcoholic elders and college kids" and even its "cluttered crustiness."

The plasma donation center moved years ago. Now the Trap's gone too. In its place, there's a pristine pub with a name intended to suggest a sanctuary.

It's a name that can also mean reversing course, which fits the retro feel. But it also seems entirely ironic: Few transformations could be more progressive .

Tuesday afternoon, Calderoni entertained visitors, dealt with business issues, shared his vision. Menendez and Scott-Alvarez, the UT grads, the Retreat alumni, asked if they could buy a beer.

Nope, Calderoni said: "I'll buy you a beer."

And they enjoyed a nice, frosty brew.

Rick Gershman can be reached at rgershman@sptimes.com or 226-3431.

[Last modified February 1, 2007, 08:14:47]