New Owner Buys Former Ace Bar Building, Plans Return to Bar and Restaurant

(KNSI) – A building that anchored St. Cloud’s East End for 80 years is headed back toward its roots.

Marla Waseka, owner of the East End development company Moxie Ladies, has purchased the former Ace Bar building at 423 East St. Germain Street, along with the parking lot behind it. Waseka announced the purchase in a social media post, saying the deal closed on June 26th.

“This is a puzzle piece that fits right in to the rejuvenation concept of an urban, walkable entertainment district and definitely benefits the businesses we have next door,” Waseka wrote.

Waseka said the purchase is one of several moves still coming together for the property. “There are a few more pieces of the puzzle that need to fit in yet,” she wrote, adding that the projects will keep her and her daughters busy “for a little while.”

The building has sat mostly vacant since the original Ace Bar & Grill closed on October 31st, 2016. Since then, the site has cycled through a string of plans that never stuck. A St. Cloud nonprofit floated plans for a program space there in recent years that didn’t materialize. A tribal-based medical cannabis dispensary briefly operated at the location in the summer of 2024 before city health inspectors shut it down over safety violations. Last year, the St. Cloud Zoning Board of Appeals approved a Conditional Use Permit for a daycare center at the site, Mother’s Love Childcare Center, but that plan stalled.

Waseka said her plan is to return the building to a bar and restaurant, calling it what the space has “always been destined to be.” She asked for patience as the project comes together but did not lay out a specific reopening timeline in her post.

Moxie Ladies has been steadily active on East St. Germain Street for several years. Waseka bought the Mackrell building at 413-415 East St. Germain Street in November 2022 and renovated it into four apartments, two retail spaces and a basement now home to her shop, Sage & Salvage.

Her daughter, Maddie Waseka, owns the Kitchenette next door to the Ace Bar building at 417 East St. Germain Street. Marla Waseka has also helped organize the East End’s Festi-Fall celebration and has been involved in the city’s East End Vision Small Area Plan.

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