Stroll into The Swiss, and you'll find vaulting glass windows, a sparkling mahogany bar, microbrewery beer and quality music.
Wooden chairs and tables scuff across a terrazzo floor, and the sound bounces off the high, pressed-tin ceiling. In the daytime, diners talk business or read the paper over fried oysters and sandwiches; at night, a younger crowd downs Mirror Pond Pale Ale and other beers and dances to pounding live music.
"You definitely have to like music to work here," said Rainie Kunde, a kitchen manager who has worked at The Swiss for 10 years.
Patrons, employees and owners will celebrate those 10 years next week. The Swiss opened on April 28, 1993, and has enjoyed a decade of success. What makes The Swiss notable is how it started. Ten years ago, "downtown revitalization" was a term bandied about by politicians who tried one idea after another to revive Tacoma's deserted, crime- torn urban core. The University of Washington had announced plans to build an urban campus, but the reality was years away. In the meantime, the neighborhood belonged to drug dealers. The first time Gayl Bertagni visited the old Swiss Tavern, when she and three friends were looking for a business to buy, she felt physically ill.
"In the ladies room, in the garbage can, I saw a hypodermic needle," Bertagni said. "I came out, and I felt faint. I had to sit down."

SPIT AND HISTORY
Bertagni and her partners, Bob Hill and Jack McQuade, knew each other from Engine House No. 9, a popular bar and restaurant at Sixth Avenue and Pine Street. Bertagni worked in the kitchen; Hill and McQuade were bartenders. Hill also had a band.
Together, they dreamed of opening their own neighborhood pub. A fourth partner, Marty Kling, provided the capital to start up the business; they bought him out a couple of years later. The Swiss Tavern was the first place they looked. Real estate agent Blaine Johnson took them there, and convinced them it was more than a dark basement. The windows were covered in plywood, chicken wire and stucco. There was a lowered ceiling of acoustical tile. Tacky paneling covered every surface. The bar was painted Kelly green.
But the partners pushed up one of the acoustical tiles and saw the pressed-tin ceiling high overhead. Beneath the stucco they glimpsed the glass windowpanes. They were sold. They still had to win over property managers at the University of Washington. The school had purchased the Swiss Hall in 1991, planning to eventually incorporate the building into a branch campus - or, at the very least, to work on cleaning up the neighborhood. They didn't want another seedy pub.
"We had to convince them, because they'd rather have an empty building than a bunch of drug dealers," she said. University officials made them create a formal business plan, then rework it and present it a second time, before they were satisfied, she said.
"We wanted somebody who was going to be successful and who knew what they were doing," said Neal Lessenger, who was the University of Washington's director of real estate at the time. "We liked the idea that they were Tacoma people and this was a Tacoma thing."

Lessenger, a Stadium High graduate, had seen the neighborhood deteriorate over the years, and was horrified at the condition of the tavern when the UW bought the building. He's delighted at how the pub has changed, and showed it off to the university's regents a year or two after it opened. Bertagni, Hill and McQuade still hold a long-term lease from the university, and neither side has plans to end it, they said.
It took six months to overhaul the pub. The partners had a crash course in construction, donning masks to tear out asbestos, disassembling an enormous old boiler, polishing the ceiling. Their children helped out. Bertagni's daughter Bianca Sanders, now 21 and a Swiss employee, learned to ride her unicycle on the pub's spacious floor.
They sanded down the tacky bar and were shocked to find rare South African mahogany underneath. Members of the Swiss Society, which originally owned the building, told them it had come on a boat around Cape Horn. Stains and hardware showed that at one time, the bar was fitted with a trough spittoon. Sanding spittle stains and exposing old brick walls wasn't the only transformation needed, however. When The Swiss first opened, the neighborhood still was rife with drug dealers.
"Jack and I stood out front every night, just physically being there, talking to people," Hill said. "We were out there day and night, asking people to walk on the other side of the street."
McQuade and Hill wrote down license plate numbers when they saw cars whose passengers seemed to be buying or selling drugs. They passed the numbers to the police.
"With the help of the Tacoma Police Department and the Liquor Board, we got this place cleaned up," McQuade said.
Now, the area is full of students and business people. Instead of dive bars and vacant warehouses, neighboring businesses are the UW Tacoma, Rock Pasta and Buzzard's, a used-CD store.

BETTER CLIENTELLE
Kitchen manager Joe Straight came to work at The Swiss a couple of months after it opened. "When I was first here, we had four beers on tap, two microwaves and a double hot plate," he said. "When the stove came in, that was a big deal."
Soon, Bertagni established a menu of sandwiches and entrees, of which the pan-fried oysters are the standout favorite. Al Gore got a Secret Service agent to pick them up for him when he was in Tacoma on the campaign trail a few years ago. Bertagni thinks maybe U.S. Rep. Norm Dicks (D-Belfair), a Swiss regular, told Gore about them.
The food drew local politicians and business people such as Wayne Simpson, who owns RAS Granite and Marble nearby. Simpson came to The Swiss just about every night for part of 1994, when he was a bachelor living in a downtown loft. He met his wife at The Swiss, and he still visits a couple of times a week. Before 1993, though, he wouldn't have set foot inside.
"It was kind of a dump, a lot of drugs in that area," he said. "That wouldn't be a place I would normally go see."
Former Tacoma Mayor Brian Ebersole is a regular. When The Swiss first opened, "It was kind of an oasis in the desert there," he said. "There certainly were not many reasons to be in that neighborhood except for The Swiss. But now it is wonderfully situated right there with the booming university. They've done a great job with it." For a long time, music at The Swiss meant classic blues, and bands such as Little Bill & the Bluenotes. Now, weekend evenings cater to a younger crowd, and the dance floor is packed with people dancing to cover bands and disc jockeys.
"Tacoma certainly loves to dance," said Hill, who books the bar's bands.
Over the years The Swiss' acts have included Keb Mo, Danny O'Keefe, the Ventures, the Fabulous Wailers, Red Elvises and the Kingsmen. Current favorites include Kry, Retros, Boinkers, Dr. Funk and Bump Kitchen. One memorable night a band called String Cheese Incident called and said they were nearby, had heard of The Swiss and would play for dinner and beer.
"That was one of our best music nights," Hill said. "And we never saw them again." Now, String Cheese Incident has a wildly loyal following.

EXPERIMENTING

Bertagni, Hill and McQuade have tried many experiments with their pub. Knowing that local Swiss people missed their club and polka dances in the hall upstairs, they put on monthly polka breakfasts for years. The breakfasts and dances were popular, but Bertagni had to stop organizing them when she got overwhelmed.
One year, they put on plays. "Oh yeah, the plays," Hill remembered with a smile. Local actors performed on The Swiss' stage, with the windows darkened. Patrons ate and drank beer while they watched. They might do that again, he said. And for the past few years, The Swiss has been an art gallery, giving local artists a place to show work and giving an eclectic look to the pub's enormous brick walls. It's the only pub in the world decorated with $320,000 worth of Chihuly artwork on loan from the artist. Plus, Chihuly's collection of accordions decorate the walls.
"We're pretty proud of how it looks," McQuade said.
The work has been made easier by the friends' partnership. McQuade is the administrator, managing the pub during the day. Bertagni handles the kitchen, and Hill books the music and handles the night shift.
"We're a good team," Bertagni said.
Her daughter, Bianca, hopes she can have a pub like The Swiss someday. "It's really cool to be a part of it," she said. "It's interesting to see that people can do that, can have a dream or vision, and it can come true."

CHIHULY AND THE SWISS

Dale Chihuly heard about The Swiss' renewal before it opened, and couldn't wait to go, said Terry Rishel, his studio manager and photographer. Like Chihuly, Rishel grew up in Tacoma, so the men were eager to check out the Swiss as soon as it opened.
"He spent three or four hours down there with dinner and a bunch of people," Rishel said. "He was really excited to see this positive step in the neighborhood, because all those years it had been so bad."
Chihuly (who asked Rishel to tell us the story) told Rishel that The Swiss reminded him of beloved pubs he'd visited in Ireland and other parts of Europe.
"He said, 'I just love this place so much. ... Why don't you talk to them and ask if they'd be interested in putting my glass down there?'"
Of course, The Swiss' owners were interested. They painted a space above the bar to make a clean backdrop for the art. Chihuly sent over employees who installed lighting and 10 pieces of his "Venetian" series (which also can be seen on the Bridge of Glass). The pieces are valued at $40,000 each, Rishel said.
Chihuly went over and checked out the display. He thought it looked too crowded, so he took two down. The eight pieces are on loan. It's the only bar in the world with a Chihuly installation, Rishel said.
"He'd never done anything like that before," Rishel said. "He was just incredibly excited about that part of town."

Lisa Kremer, The News Tribune
Credit: The News Tribune