After two years of being an eyesore along one of Manitowoc’s busiest streets, the former Pizza Hut building is getting ever closer to becoming the city’s newest coffee shop.
Pizza Hut put the building at 1022 Washington Street up for sale in April of 2024, and for a while, it remained vacant.
It was eventually purchased by Eric Larson with a plan to transform the building into a Ziggi’s Coffee.
Larson, a Port Washington native, decided to get into the coffee business because he loves the interactive nature of customer service and, as a coffee lover, he decided that was the perfect way to break into the industry.
He settled on the Colorado-based Ziggi’s due to its rise in popularity, and was trying to open the first franchise in Wisconsin, but issues with the former Pizza Hut building gave a franchisee in Medford the opportunity to beat him to the punch.
“The reception was so great, it actually blew away all the expectations of the franchise owner,” Larson said of that location.
Undeterred, Larson pushed forward with his plans.
But why Manitowoc?
“I think Manitowoc is just really a gem of a community,” he said. “I think I’m lucky to catch it on the upswing. I think that there’s a lot happening here in the next several years, and I’m very lucky to have actually found the property here in Manitowoc. It’s very difficult to find something, especially with that location. Very good location.”
The location may be perfect, but the building was not.
Once demolition work began, the construction workers noticed some unique quirks in the walls, specifically that there were essentially two walls built with a space in between them.
“When this was built in the 70s, apparently, it was not built to code,” Larson revealed. “There was a very great danger of what was called wind shear..pushing against the wall from the side. This was unknown to any owner. No one would have known unless they would have done this destruction… It was really a safety concern for me. It was a safety concern for the general contractor.”
Larson and his team thought about getting a structural engineer involved, but there was no guarantee that it would fix the problem, so the decision was made to demolish the structure, aside from the roof.
The roof was kept for financial reasons, but also for legal purposes.
“Zoning laws have changed,” he explained. “There are setbacks for buildings (that) have to sit here. You’d have to move (or) destroy the whole slab. You may have to destroy the whole roof, everything and just start over with a brand new building, and that could take another year or two years.”
So, the roof was kept intact and essentially placed on stilts while the behind-the-scenes work was done.
Larson admits that it took a lot longer than he anticipated.
“It was only supposed to be up there for probably a few months, but we had to put concrete down to build the new walls,” he explained. “Of course, you can’t put concrete down in -10 degree weather.”
Larson praised the City of Manitowoc for being easy to work with and for its understanding of the issue he and his team were facing.
Fast forward several months, and the construction team with Green Bay-based Bayland Buildings is hard at work getting the building completed, with about a month left before the structure will be move-in-ready.
Maritime Plumbing and Manitowoc Heating have also been hired to help with the building as they get ever closer to ending the saga of the former Pizza Hut building.
