University of Minnesota bus crashes into Acadia Café

A crash involving a University of Minnesota bus will leave a beloved West Bank restaurant closed indefinitely.

MINNEAPOLIS (FOX 9) - A popular West Bank restaurant is now closed indefinitely after a University of Minnesota connector bus crash on Tuesday.

Minneapolis Fire Department officials say a passenger vehicle and the bus were involved in an accident prior to the crash. The bus appears to have caused significant damage to the Acadia Café, located at 329 Cedar Avenue in Minneapolis.

Bus crashes into Café Acadia

A bus crashed into a café in the Cedar Riverside neighborhood of Minneapolis Tuesday afternoon.

According to its Facebook page, "Acadia is a restaurant, craft beer bar and music venue located in the heart of Minneapolis’s West Bank."

"Everyone is safe. Thank you for your support, we will be closed indefinitely," read a post. A GoFundMe has since been created for the benefit of its employee.

Ownership of Acadia Cafe is hurting after the crash.

"I don’t really know how to wrap my head around it right now, they don’t prepare you for that," Katie Essler told FOX 9. She is the general manager of the restaurant. "My bartender called me a little bit after noon and told me there was a bus in the dining room."

Inside the building Essler says a cook was in the back kitchen and a bartender was in the front, "and he said the bus came through the side of the building, it stopped, and then it started up again and went another 10 to 12 feet before it stopped for good," Essler said.

The restaurant was open at the time, but there weren’t any customers around.

(FOX 9)

"[My] first thought is it’s a miracle that that bus didn’t hit anybody," Essler said. "[My] second thought is that there’s going to be a lot of paperwork."

Her thoughts are also with people living above the restaurant who have now been displaced, "I don’t think anyone upstairs was hurt, which is excellent news because I know pieces of ceiling came down into our lobby," Essler said.

Acadia is under new ownership after a sale during the pandemic, and they’d recently wrapped up a major remodel. Now all of their work - and their vision for the future - lies in rubble.

Many in the Twin Cities music scene know Acadia as the place where they first played, and its closing – no matter how long – will widely be seen as a major loss.

WATCH THE CRASH: Acadia Café released videos showing the bus crash