Wahlstrom’s Restaurant out of business

A family-owned restaurant in Marquette County has closed after more than half a century in business. The Wahlstrom’s building in Harvey was recently foreclosed on for unpaid taxes and auctioned off.

The restaurant’s owner couldn’t reach a new lease agreement with the building’s new owner, so the restaurant went out of business Sunday afternoon. “People began, I think, after a while to take it for granted,” Steve Wahlstrom said. “They know you’re always there, they’re going to be there, and the one part that slips by, I think, is you’re always there, but you need continued support in order to keep the doors open.”

However, this may not be the end of the road for Wahlstrom’s. Steve wants to re-open the restaurant in a new location in the near future. “We’ve been serving the Marquette area, and that’s basically what we would wish to continue to do,” he said. “We’ve got a very large market radius, and we’re not looking for any specific township or any specific community.”

Signs outside the building say that Wahlstrom’s 50th anniversary was this year, but Steve says his parents actually opened it in September 1961, so it was in business for 52 years.