ROSCOE VILLAGE — Friends and family often joked that Mike Green, the late owner of Village Tap, was the mayor of Roscoe Village.
Next month, he will be honored for that dedication, with a honorary street sign going up for him near the bar at 2055 W. Roscoe St.
“He really championed Roscoe Village as a neighborhood,” said Jeff Hoffman, Village Tap’s general manager. “Roscoe Village was a much different neighborhood than it is now and Mike really built a strong community centered around Village Tap.”
Green first opened the Village Tap in 1990 to focus on craft beer and was an early champion of Goose Island Brewery, Half Acre Beer Company and Revolution Brewing when they first debuted.
When he died suddenly on Oct. 10, 2017, a few days after undergoing a procedure for a heart-related issue, the Roscoe Village community was shocked and saddened.
Not long after his death, the Roscoe Village Chamber of Commerce began working with the city to get the street named after Green. On July 25, Ald. Scott Waguespack (32nd) introduced a measure to have West Roscoe Street, between North Hoyne and North Damen avenues, be designated as “Michael Isaac Green Way.”
“We loved Mike,” said Tessa Orzech, program manager at the chamber. “The sign going up there is huge in the community because he was so well loved and so respected.”
Orzech said Green was on the chamber for more than a decade and she worked with him to run her comedy show at the bar. In addition to the street sign, the chamber also wants to create a humanitarian award in Green’s honor, she said.
“The motto for it will be ‘Be like Mike,’” Orzech said. “He was such a good friend so we wanted to have that reminder, to be more like him, because he was a truly exemplary person.”
The unveiling of the sign is set for Oct. 12 and will be followed by a celebration of Green’s life at Village Tap. Additional information about the event can be found here.
“We’re going to have a number of speakers and friends there,” Hoffman said. “And after that anyone who wants to say anything is more than welcome to come up.”
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