The bar is a recurring setting in the Comedy Central TV series 'Detroiters.'īut the Cass Corridor's streets in the late 1980s were rougher than when Boukas' family last owned the Temple Bar in the 1970s. So he set out to befriend the drug dealers and prostitutes hanging out in the neighborhood, offering the bar as a refuge and place where they might start reordering their lives. The bar stands today as one of the few businesses and properties near the arena that weren't sold to land speculators or real estate entities linked to the Ilitch organization, the developer of the newly opened $863-million sports and entertainment venue.
That was the year George Boukas, then in his late 20s, decided to buy the Temple Bar at 2906 Cass Ave., a dive bar that his family previously had owned for decades. It was 1988, and a gritty stretch of Detroit known as the Cass Corridor was still many years away from getting rebranded as part of Midtown and becoming home to the new Little Caesars Arena.
