3/11/2010
With Guinness comes a lot of goodwill from Kells owners
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| With Guinness comes a lot of goodwill from Kells owners |
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Clarice Keating
St. Patrick’s Day is traditionally observed with solemnity in Gerard McAleese’s native Ireland, but you wouldn’t guess that by the reveling of his customers in Downtown Portland each year, celebrating the holiday at Kells Irish Pub.
This year the holiday will span six days with thousands of people traveling far and wide for one of the Northwest’s biggest St. Patrick’s Day festivals, which celebrates “music, entertainment, food and frivolity,” as noted on the pub’s Web site.
Within the framework of Guinness consumption and other indulgences, Gerard and his wife, Lucille, have built in opportunities for one of the greatest priorities in their life, doing good for others.
All door proceeds from a performance by Curtis Salgado and the Crazy 8s on March 16 will benefit Mercy Corps’ relief work in Haiti.
After all, that’s the business — a lot of fun and a lot of good generated for the community.
“Kells is a personification of Gerard,” Lucille said.
The business sponsors a variety of fundraising events, and Gerard and Lucille have volunteered for and served on the boards for many nonprofits and community organizations since they moved to Portland in 1996. In January, the business hosted a social event and silent auction that raised $57,300 for St. Andrew Nativity School, the Northwest’s only tuition-free private middle school serving low-income at-risk students.
A recent sweep of the Kells ceiling, which is peppered throughout the year with customer’s donated cash, thrown up and attached with some sleight of hand by the bar’s employees, brought down $8,400. Gerard and Lucille matched that amount and donated it to the Providence Child Center’s Center for Medically Fragile Children.
“It’s like a gift to be able to help others out,” Lucille said.
Gerard, who hails from Belfast, expanded the business to Portland in 1996, after opening the first Kells in Seattle’s Pike Place Market in 1983.
His family emigrated from their home in Belfast during the late ‘70s when The Troubles were on, a period of ethno-political conflict in Northern Ireland that pitted mostly Protestant unionists against primarily Catholic nationalist communities.
After two car bombs exploded outside the Catholic family’s home, Gerard’s mother had had enough and packed up the family for Vancouver B.C., and they later moved to Mercer Island.
Gerard stayed in Ireland to go to school, but joined the family in 1980, and opened the first Kells just a few years later. It was a family business — his brothers helped with construction; his mother prepared food in the kitchen and hosted.
“I’d visited all the Irish bars as a young guy, and I thought, ‘I can do this,’” Gerard said. Literally hundreds, he clarified with a laugh.
His vision was a clean Irish pub, with no plastic shamrocks. He used money he’d saved from playing semi-professional soccer and working construction, as well as some help from his mom, for the start-up. And from his simple idea, came a business — with roots in Seattle, Portland and San Francisco — they are community hubs that promote all things Irish.
Lucille, who grew up in Texas and Kansas, joined the family in 1988 after she met Gerard in L.A. — he was there visiting a friend and she was there for work.
The first time the couple went out, Gerard showed up for the date with his two brothers in tow.
“It was cute, like having a chaperoned date,” Lucille said, turning to smile at her husband and adding, “I liked the brothers almost as much as I liked you.”
By the time Lucille started adding her details-oriented fine-tuning touch to the family business, Kells had already established itself as a must-see locale in Seattle after a write up in the New York Times, after just six months open.
Gerard was so young, in his early 20s, and more experienced business owners wanted to give him a boost.
“Being so young, I got away with so much,” Gerard said.
For instance, his landlord would let him pay his March rent late, on the 18th, after the big St. Patrick’s Day festivities.
As far as the business goes, Gerard has got the big picture vision for what he wants to see happen and Lucille knows how to figure out the details to get it done. Gerard loves soccer and wanted to start a league, Lucille helped figure out the logistics, and Kells now sponsors five men’s and three women’s high-level competitive adult teams in Portland.
Their first year working together in Portland, Gerard decided there should be a St. Patrick’s Day parade, so Lucille assembled a committee to get the proper permits, and that popular tradition entertained Portlanders for more than a decade.
It’s this kind of vision that has Kells designated as one of America’s top Irish pubs on lists by various publications.
On Saturday and Sunday, people who head downtown can check out Irish wolfhounds, Irish dancers, bagpipers and live Irish music, sample traditional Irish food, and the kids can try out some arts and crafts.
At night, after the little ones go home, there are bands and beer and food for over-21 revelers, culminating with a performance by Irish singer Imelda May on St. Patrick’s Day Wednesday, March 17.
“They really have been Portland’s ambassadors from Ireland,” said longtime friend Brian Doherty, who helped resurrect the Portland chapter of the Ancient Order of Hibernians, a Catholic Irish fraternal organization. Gerard offered the basement of Kells as a meeting spot for the order.
“There are so many expats here,” Dougherty said. “People from Europe, South America, they all love the feeling there. It’s kind of like that neighborhood pub you had at home.”
The McAleeses were some of Brenda McLaughlin’s first friends when she moved to Portland in 2001.
Like Gerard, McLaughlin was born in Belfast, but her family now lives outside Dublin. Her children and the McAleeses’ two sons went to Jesuit High School together, and Gerard and Lucille welcomed the entire family into their Portland fold.
“They’re very open to new people coming into their lives,” McLaughlin said. “They’re very welcoming and kind.”
Lucille and Gerard gave McLaughlin the entire restaurant side of their business to throw her 50th birthday party. It was loud and raucous, and they pulled out all the stops to make it a special evening, McLaughlin said, adding that it was “absolutely fantastic.”
“They have made my life better by being in it, them and their two boys,” she said.
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