Business & Tech

Hospitality Group to Maintain Woodbury's Aperitif

Morrissey Hospitality is serving as trustees of the lien on the property. The CFO said no firm plans for the Woodbury restaurant are in place.

Plans for Aperitif—the Woodbury restaurant that and whose ownership group is the subject of a —are still being developed.

That’s according to Philip Jungwirth, CFO of Morrissey Hospitality, a St. Paul-based company that the courts have assigned to serve as trustees of the lien on the property.

Jungwirth said he could not comment on any future plans for the restaurant and Morrissey Hospitality hasn’t solicited any buyers since taking over responsibility for the upkeep of Aperitif in late February.

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JLT Group, Inc., which owns , fell under federal scrutiny in mid-February when the FBI and IRS launched a fraud investigation of the company. The restaurant closed shortly thereafter, though Patrick Short, who at the time was the general manager at the , which is also owned by JLT Group, said the investigation had .

In a February interview, Short told Woodbury Patch that his understanding was that the restaurant would reopen at some point.

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“I don’t believe that it is a close and sell it off kind of thing,” he said.

Angela Hauer, director of sales and marketing at the Woodbury Sheraton, said the hotel is no longer affiliated with Aperitif. Short has taken a job in Michigan with the company that runs the local hotel, she said.

In the meantime, Morrissey Hospitality will be maintaining the building and making sure “it doesn’t grow legs and walk away,” Jungwirth said.

“We’re just in the protection stage,” he said.


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