ORANGE BEACH, Ala. – Several restaurants have called the place home and it even once housed the Convention and Visitors Bureau visitor center.

Now the building that was Tipseas Steam Shack for about three years through three owners will become the new Shuckers Oyster location.

Manager Robbie Redd has overseen extensive renovations and believes the business is ready to take off. He’s trying to get to ready for a soft opening on Friday and through the weekend with the grand opening on Tuesday.

“We were just going to do a light little opening,” Redd said. “Originally it was just supposed to be an invite weekend where we just tell people to come in, but he called and said get the word out.

“We’re going to have a few things. On Sunday we’ll be here for the Super Bowl with light hors dourness and the game on. On Feb. 5 we’re doing our actual grand opening getting ready for all the Mardi Gras stuff.”

“He” is owner Terry Hester who opened the original Shuckers in Mississippi.

 “We’re going to try to give it a run and I think we’ll do good here,” Redd said. “Right now it’s going to be all baked, broiled and steamed and then we’re looking to enlarge our kitchen downstairs to where this will be more of the bar area and downstairs will be more of the restaurant. Once we do that, then we’ll incorporate more fried foods.”

Tipseas was more of a locals place and didn’t have a menu per se, but had specials every day with a few stables on the menu. But there was no fryer.

Redd said plans are to finish out the downstairs, which was never used by the trio of Tipseas’ owners, once it attains zoning for a kitchen.

“Right now downstairs is zoned for storage,” he said. “So we have to go in front of the city in front of the planning board and see if we can get it changed back to a restaurant. We’re able to dress it up and make it look like a restaurant we just can’t put in any tables and chairs yet.

“It has a lot to do with parking. We’re going to try to lease out this little strip beside us and clear it out. It’s just a little triangle that goes back into that waterway and it would give us some extra room for parking spaces.”

Locals who frequented Tipseas might be a bit shocked at the new look up stairs where all the tables and chairs match, stained wood planking covers the walls and a piano sits over in the front right corner.

“All new walls framed out, new lights, décor,” Redd said. “Everything. We even went in and polished the floors.

“We’re going to try to cater to the locals and provide some piano. Right now we’re talking about doing piano on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights with local entertainment in between. We’ll probably do like single and duo acts, acoustic stuff.”

And of course there’ll be oysters on the half shell.

“We’ll have somebody behind the bar here shucking oysters and downstairs once we get set up down there,” Reed said.

Leaving The Wharf was a tough call for Hester, Redd said, but this is a building they’ve wanted to be in for some time.

“It’s just we had been looking at the building originally a long time ago I think,” he said. “We really didn’t want to leave The Wharf area but we saw an opportunity and decided to take a chance on it.

“We’re going to give it a shot. Plenty of drafts, plenty of wine, plenty of booze, plenty of oysters, plenty of piano.”

Bringing in the piano is a step back to the original Shuckers’, Redd said.

“The original name is Shuckers Oyster and Piano Bar,” he said. “That was the name at our original location in Ridgeland, Miss. The owner Terry Hester and I were talking about it and he had the idea to bring the piano in. He had been talking about it at the other place, bringing it back there also.

“I told him I thought that was a great idea because not only is going back to our original roots and there’s not a lot of piano bars down here. Last one I remember was at The Wharf.”