Art's Tavern and Blu Both Have New Owners. Here's What Didn't Change.

"Where do I sign?"

That's what Paul Olson said the moment Tim Barr called him in August 2024 and asked if he knew anyone who might want to buy Art's Tavern. Barr wasn't fishing for suitors. He'd run the place with his wife, Bonnie Nescot, since 2000, and after a rough stretch through the pandemic years, he was ready to hand it off. Olson didn't need to think it over. He and his wife Barbara had gotten engaged at Art's in 1992. They'd eaten there five nights a week during their years visiting Glen Arbor. The tavern wasn't a business opportunity to them. It was where their life together started.

That transaction closed on June 2, 2025, making the Olsons the fourth owners of Art's Tavern since Prohibition. Less than fourteen months earlier, on April 1, 2024, Glen Arbor's other anchor restaurant went through its own quiet handoff: Randy and Mari Chamberlain, who opened Blu on the Lake Michigan shoreline in 2008, turned the keys over to their son Brandon.

Two of the town's most recognizable restaurants changed hands within about a year of each other. If you only read the headlines, that might sound like the start of a story about a town in flux. It isn't. Both sales were built on the same idea, and it's worth understanding what that idea actually is if you spend any time in Glen Arbor.

The Corner of M-22 and Lake Street Has Only Had Four Owners

Art's Tavern has sat on the corner of M-22 and Lake Street since 1934, when Art Sheridan renamed his late father's saloon after himself. The building has survived an electrical fire, a Depression, and a pandemic that nearly closed it for good. Through all of that, it changed hands only three times before the Olsons arrived: from the Sheridan family to an owner named Wiesen in 1986, then to Barr and Nescot in 2000.

When the Olsons took over, the question everyone asked first wasn't about the menu. It was about the cash register. Art's has never taken credit cards, and Olson made clear right away that wasn't changing either.

"Will you take credit cards? Nope. Will you change anything? Nope," he told the Glen Arbor Sun the week the deal closed.

The pennants stayed on the walls and ceiling. The Christmas decorations stayed up year-round the way regulars expect. The retractable pool table stayed. The shot ski stayed. The entire staff who'd worked for Barr and Nescot was rehired under the new ownership, and Art's reopened just two days after the sale, timed so it wouldn't miss a single Wednesday, which happens to be chicken jalapeño soup day. Olson was explicit about why that mattered: "We can't disappoint the current customers right out of the gate."

The Olsons aren't restaurant novices looking for a project. They're the team behind Mission Table and the Jolly Pumpkin on Old Mission Peninsula, and Barbara continues to run events for both of those properties while Paul operates Art's full time. They bought a business they already understood from the inside, because they'd been customers of it for over thirty years.

A Mile Down the Shore, Blu Made the Same Choice

Blu sits on the water a short drive from Art's, and its transition followed the same logic even though the restaurants couldn't be more different. Where Art's is burgers, tater tots, and a shot ski, Blu built its reputation on a daily handwritten menu, a deep wine list curated by a certified sommelier, and a duck confit so popular that Randy Chamberlain started issuing numbered keepsake cards to guests once he realized people were tracking how many ducks he'd served. By 2019 that number had passed 10,000.

Randy and Mari opened Blu in 2008 and ran it together for sixteen years, Randy in the kitchen and Mari managing the dining room and wine program. They started planning their exit in 2019, giving themselves five years to hand the restaurant to someone who already understood what made it work: their son Brandon, who'd bused tables there starting at sixteen and had spent twenty years in restaurants across the region, including stints at Trattoria Stella and The Franklin in Traverse City, before coming back to Blu.

The deal closed on April 1, 2024, and Randy wrote about the decision in terms that echo exactly what the Olsons would say about Art's a year later.

Leaving on your own terms in the restaurant business is not that common. Since 2008 Mari and I have lived our dream creating the dining experience we love ourselves, in an unparalleled location that humbled us every day. We believe Blu is being left in the hands of Brandon and a team that will continue to recognize and honor this vision.

Chef Todd Thompson, who'd worked alongside Randy for eight years by that point, stayed on to run the kitchen. The daily-changing menu format Randy built the restaurant around is still how Blu operates today. Randy and Mari have since spent time traveling in an RV and volunteering as camp hosts at Fayette State Park, checking in on the restaurant they built but no longer running it.

What Actually Changed, Side by Side

Why the Continuity Is the Real Story

It would be easy to read both sales as nostalgia, two beloved spots getting a gentle pass to trusted hands. But there's a pattern here that says something more specific about how Glen Arbor works as a place, not just as a collection of businesses.

Neither restaurant went to an outside buyer looking to flip the name or modernize the format. Both went to people who were already embedded in the restaurant's story before they owned a piece of paper that said so. The Olsons had thirty years of personal history at Art's before they had a purchase agreement. Brandon Chamberlain grew up inside Blu's kitchen. In a town small enough that the restaurant where you got engaged and the restaurant you eventually buy can be the same building, ownership transitions don't look like acquisitions. They look like succession within a circle of people who already understood what was worth protecting.

That matters if you're the kind of person who pays attention to a place beyond its listings and its lake access. The businesses that define Glen Arbor's character aren't traded like commodities here. They get handed to people who already loved them enough to keep the shot ski.

The Rest of the Table Is Still Moving

None of this means Glen Arbor's food scene has gone still. Cherry Republic, the specialty cherry retailer founded by Bob Sutherland in 1989, has kept expanding its Lake Street campus around the Cherry Public House, which now operates year-round with twelve taps and a menu that runs from cherry BBQ ribs to fresh whitefish, alongside the adjacent Red Box Creamery for ice cream.

Down along the Crystal River, The Mill has built its Supper series around chef Bobby Thoits, who presents New American plates sourced from Northern Michigan farms in a cozy basement-level room that seats up to eight, with larger chef's table gatherings available by request. The River Club, one of the newer additions to town, runs as a self-styled "Vibeyard" through the warmer months, spreading dining across a deck overlooking the river and the village, with an eighteen-hole putt-putt course built into the property.

If you'd rather sit still with a glass of wine, the M22 Wine Patio has kept its weekend live music going through September, with a rotating lineup of local musicians playing sets most Friday and Saturday afternoons on Western Avenue.

None of that texture required anyone to sell out or start over. It's what a town looks like when the anchors stay put and the newer additions grow up around them.

If you've spent enough seasons in Glen Arbor to notice who's actually behind the counter at the places you love, you already understand something about this town that doesn't show up in a listing description. That kind of continuity, in restaurants and in neighborhoods, is part of what makes a place worth staying in. If you're curious how that same pattern shows up in Glen Arbor's residential streets and waterfront, Lydia Wiley is happy to talk it through. Schedule a private consultation whenever you're ready.