Big hole in Washburn to be filled

A property owner in downtown Washburn might adopt The Beatles’ “Fixing a Hole” as a temporary theme after the city council ordered one filled in.

Council members voted to have Badger Colish fill the hole next to the Café Coco as soon as possible. He will face fines every week the work is not completed.

The hole is the future site of a brewery Colish has been looking to build in Washburn for quite some time.It is behind schedule.

He had hoped that Lost Apostle Brewing would be open for business by springtime, but now he expects construction to begin in the coming weeks.

This isn’t Colish’s first business. He built brewpubs in Duluth’s Canal Park and elsewhere, and his plan for a brewpub beat out other proposals for the property.

That proposal sought to incorporate the former Brokedown Palace building, which served as a bar and a movie theater among other things, into his pub. But inspections revealed significant problems with the building. A leaking roof allowed water to permeate the whole building. Rotting walls and mold were found in many rooms. And the water wasn’t just from above; some came bubbling up through cracks in the basement floor when it rained in the spring.

Those problems prompted Colish to have the building torn down last July. The site has remained untouched since, with a large hole where the foundations were.

Now, one way or another, the city has ordered that to change.