Blue Leprechaun Closes After 17 Years on South University

Blue Leprechaun closed on December 13 after 17 years at 1220 South University. It opened in 2008 in the space that had been the Touchdown Cafe, and it outlasted most of the block.

Seventeen years on South University is a long run for any bar, but especially for one operating on a campus strip where the customer base turns over every four years. An Irish bar in the way that most campus-adjacent Irish bars are: dark wood, pint glasses, TVs for the game, a menu that gave you something to eat while you drank. It was not trying to be a destination. It was trying to be the place you ended up on a Thursday night, and for a lot of Michigan students over nearly two decades, that is exactly what it was.

South University has been thinning out. Between State Street and the campus, the corridor has lost the kind of density that made it feel like a neighborhood commercial strip rather than a collection of storefronts waiting for leases. Losing a 17-year tenant accelerates that. I walked the block recently, and the gaps are harder to ignore than they were even a year ago. Places that defined South University for students are disappearing, and what replaces them tends to be either more expensive or more temporary.

Blue Leprechaun survived floods, renovations, and 17 years of campus turnover. It did not survive whatever the economics of that block have become. Touchdown Cafe lasted decades before it. Leprechaun lasted 17 years. I am curious how long the next thing lasts.

Blue Leprechaun was at 1220 S University, Ann Arbor. Open from 2008 to December 13, 2025.