By Kylie Balk-Yaatenen - March 13th 2024

 

JANESVILLE

Zoxx Social Club has had different names over the years but it’s always been a bar for General Motors workers and southside Janesville residents, with a close-knit neighborhood feel.

Individuals and groups socialize here — including the Janesville Deaf Club that gathers monthly.

The bar, at 411 W. State St., still just steps from the former General Motors plant that was shuttered 15 years ago, has weathered its share of obstacles.

And now, in what the owners foresee as possibly the toughest moment in its 90-year-history, it might soon be made to move.

If the city of Janesville goes ahead with a plan to condemn and purchase the GM site, adjacent JATCO site and 5 other small surrounding properties, including the Zoxx Social Club property, the bar would have to move, in exchange for an as-yet determined amount of compensation.

The city’s plan, after buying the GM site, is to clean it up and redevelop it.

The Janesville Council voted unanimously on Feb. 26 to take the first step toward condemning and purchasing the 7 parcels, totaling about 250 acres in all.

The five small properties are Zoxx Social Club, Frank Silha & Sons Excavating at 530 Kellogg Ave., DJF Enterprises at 1412 S. Jackson St., Jaines LLC at 1200 S. Jackson St. and a garage owned by Andrew R. Sigwell at 1212 S. Jackson St.

Janesville City Manager Kevin Lahner said in an interview with The Gazette last month that the city could close on the purchases before the end of the calendar year.

Among the city’s next steps would be notifying property owners, including Commercial Development Company that owns the GM and JATCO parcels, of its decision to issue relocation orders to them, which would allow for the start of a condemnation process and eventual sale.

“This is an opportunity to continue to rebuild our legacy. The benefits of this step allow us to control our destiny, access to other funding sources, and build a vision together. Collectively, we can create a site that is ready to market, develop, see additional investments in the surrounding areas, and ultimately improve the quality of life,” Lahner told the council in February.

Inside the small, admittedly weathered Zoxx Social Club building overlooking the sprawling long-vacant GM site, there’s music and laughter as an enthusiastic “hi” greets a visitor.

Over the music, bar patrons and the bartender share around the half-circle bar about their days and favorite songs.

Across the room, people throwing darts cheer at someone’s good aim.

Owners Desiree and Andy Wilson, who met at the bar and later married, and former bar owner Andrew Sigwell, aren’t happy with the prospect of having to relocate.

Andy Wilson, who started out working as a bartender before he bought the place, said it’s not just a property to them but a home and a family they have built.

“There is an emotional attachment to this that goes beyond ownership,” he said. “It goes beyond the patrons that come here today. It’s the lineage, the history of this place that goes so deep. For it to just be bulldozed; it makes me sick to my stomach.”

“I don’t think it can be Zoxx,” if moved elsewhere, Desiree Wilson said. “You can’t rebuild this kind of history.”

GM worker bar

A 2012 article in The Gazette mentioned the bar, then known as Sigwell’s, three years after the plant was idled in 2009.

“While the General Motors plant and its parking lots have long emptied, Sigwell’s bar is still open for business,” the article said.

The bar was known for a long time as Zachow’s, former owner Andrew Sigwell said in the 2012 Gazette article.

He said it had been there since the 1930’s. Sigwell bought it from his stepfather, Jim Zachow, who had bought it in 1989 from his parents, Roy and Geri Zachow. The Zachows had bought the former Tom Sawyer Cottage Grill in 1961 while Roy was working at the GM plant.

Sigwell, who eventually sold the bar to the Wilsons in 2020, said he shortened the name to Zoxx 411 Club because no one could ever pronounce Zachow’s.

The 2012 article called Zoxx 411 Club a neighborhood bar, one that attracted people of a variety of ages who came for dart leagues, live music or just to hang out with friends.

Sigwell told The Gazette that back to the start of the GM plant, there has been that building 411 W. State St.. He said it was a house at one point but later became a bar, drawing GM workers.

Sigwell and the Wilsons said people still today stop in who used to work at GM or know someone who did or worked at different plants from around the country; there’s a special GM tie here.

Sigwell said the story goes that Zachow’s was so popular that GM built a fence to keep workers from going there during the day, and that the company wasn’t a fan of it being so close to the plant.

As Sigwell’s grandma, Geri Zachow, told it, GM tried to get the couple to sell, taking them to dinner at the old Holiday Inn in Janesville.

Geri Zachow said she asked the company to move the bar across Jackson Street to an old lumberyard, but “they didn’t want us anywhere in the neighborhood.”

GM flew Roy to Detroit in 1987 and offered him $200,000 for the property, Geri said

“They paid for his trip over there, but he told them he wouldn’t take less than $500,000,” she told The Gazette in 2012. “I think he probably would have taken $350,000. He came back, saying, ‘Those bastards will never get the bar.’”

Sigwell remembers the day GM closed. He opened at 6 p.m. that evening and stayed open until 6 a.m. the next morning, just sitting and talking to the workers and being there for them.

“People drink when they are happy, people drink when they’re sad, people like to drink and they want a place to go to do it,” he said.

“Zoxx has been that place for people for years,” he continued. ““We’re the dive bar that you can go to when you’ve just had a really bad day. And you know, you’ve spent most of your paycheck already, and you just need a place to go and feel heard.”

Desiree Wilson said since they bought the bar in 2020 they have celebrated birthdays in the space and it’s been a home away from home for their kids in its off-hours. Their oldest son works there now.

“Can we still find a place and be in business and serve our community? Sure. I’m sure we can do that well, but it won’t be the bar we’ve had,” she said.

“Zoxx has been a destination,” Andy said, saying it’s “just kind of been a cozy little corner for people for a long time.”

“It’s not super fancy, and you don’t get a souvenir when you leave. But it’s still a destination for people to come to and share memories.”

What’s next

The family envisioned Zoxx Social Club being theirs for years to come. Now, they’re not sure what’s next.

Desiree said that they haven’t yet been contacted by the city about relocating or what that would cost.

“I still work a full time job, this[the bar] is my retirement,” Andy Wilson said. “This was my kid’s future. Now what are we going to do?”

‘Not a dump’

It wasn’t clear exactly which businesses near the former GM plant she was referring to at a city council meeting in February, but when asked how many of the 5 targeted businesses are “operational” Jimsi Kuborn, the city’s economic director, said “at least one that we know of.”

The Wilson says their bar is very much in business, and they say it hurt to hear the news that it was in line to be condemned.

Andy Wilson said Zoxx Social Club is not abandoned nor a place void of life; far from it, in fact.

He acknowledges that it’s in a rough area of the city but says it’s a family bar that serves the community.

“There’s people out there that will say ‘Zoxx is a dump’ and, ‘that’s where bad people go,’” he said. “I would encourage those people to come here any night of the week and have a conversation with our bartender or have a conversation with our patrons and they would change their mind immediately.”

Andy said that the bar hosts open mic nights, bands, dart tournaments every other Friday night that draw a regional crowd and is the site of the monthly gathering of the Janesville Deaf Club.

He jokes that when over 100 members of the Janesville Deaf Club pack the small bar wall to wall and “it’s the quietest room of over 100 people you’ll see.”

Andy Wilson, whose mother is deaf, said club members don’t otherwsie have a place to call their own, unlike in Madison, Elkhorn and Milwaukee where there are deaf clubs. In Janesville, home to the Wisconsin School for the Blind and Visually impaired, also located on the city’s southside, Zoxx became the place for them to gather.

“They have a space where they can be in a public setting and not feel awkward,” he said.

He said regulars stop in on those nights and are learning sign language to communicate with people who are deaf. He and three other bartenders sign and the bar donates back to the deaf club a portion of the proceeds made on the nights they gather there.

The bar also organizes drives to help employees who have fallen on hard times.

Andy Wilson said news about the potential relocation brought of the Janesville Deaf Club members to tears.

“Now we’re going to pull the rug out from underneath them,” he said.

“I really hope we can make it work,” if made to move, he said, but has his doubts as to the ultimate success of that plan.

“I don’t see relocation happening as seamlessly as they think it should,” he said.

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