CHEYENNE, Wyo. — A popular Casper restaurant, Wyoming Ale Works, is looking to expand into Cheyenne in the next two years as the owners set their eyes on an east-Cheyenne retail center, where they will also add a liquor store and off-track betting facility.
John Johnson, Casper-based restauranteur and founder of the Johnson Restaurant Group, appeared before the Cheyenne City Council on Monday to discuss a liquor license transfer request that his Cheyenne company, Capital City Hospitality, submitted to the city.
Later advanced by the city to the Finance Committee, he used the request as an opportunity to discuss the plans he and his partners had for the community. According to Cheyenne Mayor Patrick Collins, Johnson and the city had been in talks for a few years about a potential Cheyenne venture. Now with a property and soon a license to sell liquor onsite, that’s becoming a reality.
Johnson said his company purchased the large retail space at the southeast corner of the retail park at Lincolnway and Ridge Road. Immediately next to the Rent-A-Center is the building housing Frontier Trampoline Park. That business takes up just 25,000 square feet of the 60,000-square-foot space Johnson’s company purchased, and he said the venue isn’t going anywhere.
The remaining 35,000 square feet will be used for Wyoming Ale Works, Wyoming Discount Liquor — a chain from Casper also owned by Johnson’s company — and an off-track betting facility. Johnson said all three are needed to make the development viable.
“If we didn’t have all three components of this project, we would not be able to make a project of this size work,” Johnson said. “Not in Cheyenne, not anywhere in the world.”
The project would come in three phases. Wyoming Discount Liquor would arrive first and utilize the main, north-facing entrance to the building where the last occupant of the space, Big Lots, once had its main entrance. Construction on this part would begin soon after the new year and would be ready for opening in the first quarter of 2027.
Phase two is for the betting facility. According to Johnson, that would be a Bally’s location and would utilize one of the incoming west-side entrances to the building. Johnson did not tell the council when he hoped this part of the project would come to fruition.
Sharing a west-side entrance with the betting facility will be Ale Works. The Casper bar and grill specializes in beer — it has 40 different choices on tap — but also offers a diverse menu with standard pub fare, Italian food, Mexican food and more. The Cheyenne location’s menu would also take inspiration from J’s Pub, another of Johnson’s Casper restaurants.
“We feel like there’s the best of both,” Johnson said. “We’ve worked really hard in Casper not to have our restaurants compete with themselves, but here we think that we can blend those two and have an awesome concept that will operate under the brand name of Wyoming Ale Works.”
The restaurant phase will have to wait until at least 2028, Johnson said. His company is currently readying to open another restaurant in Billings, Montana, and is limited to just one new restaurant per year.
When the whole development comes together, what is now a mostly-defunct retail space will be a lively dining and entertainment spot. Upgrades to the derelict west parking lot and an improved façade will come as the interiors are built out and the two west-side entrances are added.
“I feel like this is the highest and best use for a retail liquor license. We’re going to have a retail liquor store, we’re going to have a full service sit-down restaurant,” Johnson said. “When the restaurant’s completed, we’ll be able to do off-premises catering from that facility as well. And then of course the OTB would be an entertainment component.”
Ale Works will come with rooms made specifically for dinner meetings as well; one room could host up to 60 people, while the other would fit 20. That fact caught the attention of Cheyenne City Councilor Michelle Aldrich.
“There is really limited space in our community for restaurants that have meeting rooms where there can be meetings and and meals occurring at the same time,” she said.
The rest of the Cheyenne City Council will have a chance to support the venture, at least in its first phase, as it goes through the committee process and back to the council in the next few weeks.
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Dining and Cooking