New bar coming to Old Yellowstone District

The site, on the corner of Midwest Avenue and Ash Street, is on the border of downtown and the Old Yellowstone District and across the street from Racca’s pizzeria. The 24,000-square-foot downstairs has been home to many businesses including housing a Plymouth auto dealership for many years.

Matt Galloway presented plans for Roaring 22 to City Council in July as part of the application for a new liquor license city had made available. The council granted the license to Old Yellowstone Garage.

Instead, Galloway and his partners — Pete Maxwell, Richie Bratton and Mark Galloway — are purchasing a retail liquor license from the Ramada Hotel. The hotel will then apply for a resort liquor license. Those come with restrictions but are not capped based on a city’s population like retail licenses are.

A public hearing on the license transfer will be held at the Nov. 15 Casper City Council meeting. Galloway said he’s optimistic that the license will be approved, though he said, “I take nothing for granted, and nothing surprises me.”

Galloway said specific plans for the bar will not entirely match those outlined in the July presentation.

“We’re kind of in total flux,” he said.

But Galloway said initial work can begin as soon as the license transfer is approved and that the bar should open by early summer, in time for the eclipse festival in August, when thousands of visitors are expected to descend on Casper.

“We’re no dummies,” he said. “We definitely want to be open by the eclipse.”

Galloway added that work should move relatively quickly because it will be a renovation rather than new construction.

The plan presented in July called for a bar and grill catering to young professionals, featuring an area with arcade-style games and a microbrewery that customers could use to brew their own beer.

“I can assure you we will have a bar and grill area. We will serve food, booze and beer,” Galloway said. The bar and grill is expected to take up 10,000 square feet.

In addition, Galloway said there will be three retail spaces — which he hopes will include a coffee shop, among other businesses — and four condo spaces on the second floor.

Galloway owns Keg and Cork with his brother and helps run Galloway’s Irish Pub, owned by his father. The family also owns El Mark-O Lanes bowling alley. He said that he enjoys talking to patrons at those establishments about what they think Casper needs and will try to incorporate that feedback into plans for Roaring 22.

Galloway said he thinks the development will help convert downtown Casper and the Old Yellowstone District into the kind of central districts found in towns like Fort Collins, Colorado, and Denver.

“We get where the scene is going in the larger cities and we hope to emulate that and bring that to Casper,” he said.

With Racca’s, Old Yellowstone Garage, Frosty’s, Karen and Jim’s, a new enterprise taking over the Wonder Bar location, The Lyric civic auditorium and David Street Station already in or coming to the area, Galloway imagines people being drawn downtown for events, dinner and bar hopping.

He remains slightly apprehensive, noting that while he expects the uptick in the number of businesses to be a good thing, there is also the risk that competition will have a negative impact.

“Is it going to work in a way that everyone benefits or where one cannibalizes another?” Galloway said.

But mostly he’s excited about the new project.

“We’re about to embark on something that the town has really never seen,” Galloway said of the cluster of new businesses in the area. “The whole city, as a totality, is taking it on — as a whole beast.”