The 42-year-old German restaurant and bar Come Back In in the 500 block of East Wilson Street will close Aug. 31, said manager Kristina Pirius, daughter of owner Bob Worm.

Worm had refused to set a completion date, even after the city council gave final approval to redevelop the property on June 19.

On Wednesday, at Essen Haus’s latest monthly Stein Club – a $50 membership gets you discounts on food and drink and a lifetime free birthday beer a year – people told him how they met their wives or husbands at the restaurant.

“And it was kind of fun,” Worm said toward the end of a 45-minute conversation in which he found it difficult to talk about the sale of the property and the closing date.

Eau Claire-based developer JCap Real Estate plans to build an eight-story, 178-unit apartment building and a six-story, 100-room hotel on the site. The Essen Haus will be demolished to make way for the apartment building, but the hotel project calls for rebuilding the facades of the Come Back In and a neighboring building.

The 15-room Ruby Marie hotel at the corner of East Wilson and South Blair streets will be spared from development. It was built in 1875, renovated by Worm in 2000 and named after his mother. However, Worm will no longer own it – JCap Real Estate will.

The Up North Bar, another business Worm owns on the block, also will not be demolished. Pirius said her father will not own it and the couple who now run it will continue to operate it under JCap Real Estate.

“The Up North is such a little gem that people often forget,” said Pirius. “John Hardy and Teresa Hardy have just created this community that is so loving and generous and supports live music and the bar itself.”

Pirius said she was in charge of the cash register and finances, but not of personnel, music bookings or anything else.

Worm declined to say whether the property has already changed hands, but city land records show it is still in his name. The land registry confirmed there has been no recent sale.

Worm, 76, who grew up in New London in the Fox River Valley, said Essen Haus is part small-town pub, part big-city eatery packed with people. “It’s like going to a wedding you’re not invited to,” he said.

Logan Hintz, 29, has been working as a server on Taco Mondays for 7.5 years, when Come Back In offers $2 margaritas, $1 tacos and an open mic, and he says Worm is right about the wedding vibe.

“It’s a big party and you don’t really know anyone, but you can just have fun,” Hintz said. On a Saturday night, he said, the dance floor at Essen Haus could be full of people singing a polka version of Neil Diamond’s “Sweet Caroline.”

Worm said he spoke to a waitress at the Stein Club on Wednesday in 1987 who told him how she gave a customer a coaster with her name and phone number on it. They married and are still married.

Pirius, 36, grew up in the Essener Haus and the Come Back In, but says their renovation is necessary because the building is falling into disrepair.

It will be hard to say goodbye to the regular customers, she said, such as the “Jeopardy” viewers who come during happy hour every weekday and the late-night crew that often drinks until 2 a.m. She said she will also miss the dedicated staff she has built in the eight years since she left Minneapolis and her job as a mortgage banker to run the family business.

The restaurant suffered in the summer of 2022 when the city stopped allowing live music behind Come Back In and Up North Bar, Pirius and Worm said. More frequent live music had helped them continue during a time when indoor dining was restricted.

Come Back In also sponsors an outdoor volleyball league with 60 teams, she said. “I’ve been working with them for eight years in a row. When I see all their smiling faces and mentor them every week, they always say, ‘We don’t know where to go.'”

Daniel Peterson, 34, the bar manager and bartender at Essen Haus, has become a tourist attraction with his leather pants and moustache that fades into sideburns, Pirius said, adding that people often ask to have their photo taken with him.

Peterson, who has worked at the Essen Haus for 8½ years, said when he has time, he comes out from behind the bar for photos. When he wears his Brewers cap, everyone calls him “Bernie Brewer,” he said.

He said he enjoyed the people he worked with and made good friends with the regulars. “It was like hanging out with my uncles or my grandfather, depending on their age.”

Pirius, meanwhile, said she has plans to open another bar, but declined to say when or where.

“I enjoy the community of people who come here, feel at home and have a good relationship with the staff,” she said.

The place she wants to open should not be a German bar, she says. “Strangely enough, I hate sauerkraut and red cabbage.”