A move to return Pabst to its hoppy home

One of the brews that made Milwaukee famous for beer may be on the market – and the city wants it back.

Pabst Blue Ribbon, which originated in the city as the Empire Brewery in 1844, is owned by Pabst Brewing. The private equity firm Metropoulos, headed by Dean Metropoulos, purchased the company in 2010 for $250 million and moved the brewing facility from Chicago to L.A. a year later.

The Pabst brewery shut down in 1996, but a mission of city residents is to buy the brewer and bring it back.

Metropoulos' name might be familiar because his firm teamed with Apollo Global Management last year to save the Twinkie brand from extinction. The two private equity groups paid $410 million to buy the Hostess and Dolly Madison snack cake lines, as well as five plants as part of Hostess' liquidation process.

When reports emerged that Metropoulos might want to sell the company, a group of Milwaukee residents banded together to start a campaign to bring Pabst back to the city. "We see this as a tremendous opportunity to build community wealth through collective ownership of a brand whose image stems from its Milwaukee roots. It belongs here, plain and simple," says Susie Seidelman, one of the organizers of the "Bring Pabst Blue Ribbon Home" effort.

The company could go for $700 million to $1 billion.

Susie Seidelman stands outside the Pabst brewery complex March 24 in Milwaukee. She is part of a group that wants to raise money to try to bring the brewery's headquarters back to Milwaukee after hearing reports the company may be up for sale.(Photo: Carrie Antlfinger, AP)

Seidelman and the organizers envision the city of Milwaukee sponsoring the purchase by supporting a model similar to that of its ownership of! the Green Bay Packers, in which hundreds of thousands of investors buy small shares in Pabst. After the corporate offices are once again in the city, all of its production could return, too.

"Pabst currently contracts its brewing to MillerCoors, and much of it is brewed in Milwaukee, but not all," the group says on its BringPBRHome.com website. "We'd like to see all production concentrated in Milwaukee, potentially creating new union jobs."

The group has the ear of city officials and next week plans a social media campaign via Facebook and Twitter aimed at swaying Pabst, Seidelman says. On April 23, the group will begin a series of five community meetings at the former tasting room of the original Pabst Brewery. "We're doing this for the community of Milwaukee, and the strength of the project lies in those community roots and voices," Seidelman says.

Neither Perella Weinberg Partners, the firm reportedly handling the sale, nor representatives at Pabst would comment on any potential sale or the efforts to bring the brand back to Milwaukee. Pabst would say only that it is "considering financial alternatives" that will help Pabst "aggressively pursue its next phase of growth through strategic acquisitions."

Pabst Brewing has an extensive line of beer and malt liquor labels that includes Lone Star, Old Style, Schlitz and Old Milwaukee.

Contributing: The Associated Press