Violet Crown Cinema owner’s latest project is to add brewery to Railyard
Violet Crown Cinema owner’s latest project — adding Nuckolls Brewing to Railyard
ANuckolls Brewing “coming spring 2020” banner had been teasing the curious at the Railyard since fall. Spring has come and gone, and the sign was subtly changed to “coming soon.”
Details have been sparse about Nuckolls Brewing until recently, but a familiar name ends up being behind the new brewery emerging behind Boxcar.
Violet Crown Cinema owner Bill Banowsky is partnering with friend and longtime homebrewer Tom McMichael to convert the original 1920s Nuckolls Packing Co. building into Banowsky’s newest Railyard creation. Banowsky also opened Sky Coffee in fall 2018 adjacent to the Nuckolls site and across the tracks from Violet Crown, which he launched in November 2015.
Just as Violet Crown is not simply a movie theater, Nuckolls Brewing won’t be just a brewpub. There also will be a beer garden for up to 200 people with a dog-friendly section, food stands intended for area restaurants and a large outdoor screen with first-run films from Violet Crown, Banowsky said.
Banowsky hopes to have Nuckolls open by the end of the year. But the “coming spring 2020” to “coming soon” evolution had nothing to do with COVID-19 complications, he said.
“Everything is slower than you expect,” Banowsky said. “It’s nothing more than that.”
The project started as a remodel of the Nuckolls Packing Co. building but became more challenging as issues emerged with the century-old meatpacking building, including damage by a couple of possible fires. General contractor Brian Gianardi ended up peeling away the stucco façade and stripping nearly everything else, including the roof, down to the original frame.
“It’s been entirely deconstruction until now,” Banowsky said. “Reconstruction
is starting now.”
Eleven new trusses along with steel beams will be installed this month.
“Our plan is to restore the look of the building as it was when it was built,” Banowsky said.
Project architect Jeff Krolicki said the 4,800-square-foot building will have two levels with exterior access on both levels. The upper level will have an entrance from the Guadalupe Street side and will have the brewery and occupancy for 80 people. The lower level will have access to the beer garden on the track side and will have a small taproom with room for 60 people.
With the outdoor cinema, beer garden and food options, Nuckolls Brewing is made to order for the emerging new normal.
“It’s a great place to be in a pandemic,” Banowsky said. “It’s almost an outdoor food hall, in a way.”
The Nuckolls project will bring Banowsky’s investments in the Railyard to $10 million.
“I’m absolutely committed to the Railyard,” he said. “I’m thoroughly convinced the Railyard will become the center of the universe for Santa Fe. It’s so well located. It’s set up to attract not only the visitors but also the locals.”
Banowsky credits Kris Axtell for energizing the Railyard with plans to bring Opuntia Cafe, Bosque Brewing
Co. and Wayward Sons Distillery to the Market Station building across the street from Violet Crown and across the tracks from Nuckolls.
Bosque Brewing Co. has about three weeks of interior work remaining, with plans to open the taproom in August. The 4,200-square-foot space will have 20 taps, all Bosque beers, and a capacity for 100 people, though that will be limited with public health order restrictions, said Jotham Michnovicz, Bosque Brewing’s chief development officer.
Santa Fe already has 13 craft breweries. This doesn’t concern Banowsky; he said he believes a “rising tide lifts all boats.”
“He has a sense for what will work in Santa Fe and what Santa Feans want to see,” said Richard Czoski, executive director of the Santa Fe Railyard Community Corp., said of Banowsky. “He is also investing in building experiences. That’s what the Railyard is all about.”
Banowsky has owned the Nuckolls property for a few years. He had vague thoughts about opening retail or a restaurant at first, but a brewery didn’t come about until he got to talking with his friend, Tom McMichael, who retired three years ago from the information technology office at the New Mexico Environment Department.
McMichael has been homebrewing since the primordial days of modern craft brewing in the 1980s.
“My ambition was to open a brewpub back in my college days,” he said. “I was doing it more seriously when I moved to New Mexico in 1986. I was thinking of becoming a commercial brewer. The timing has never been right.”
Along came Banowsky. Nuckolls Brewing may have as many as 60 taps that Banowsky wants to fill exclusively with New Mexico beers. Three taps will feature McMichael’s house-brewed beers, likely a pale ale, an amber ale and a pilsner.
They will enlist the assistance of Alfonz Visczoly, who also helped engineer and install the brewing system at Santa Fe Brewing Co.’s current location. McMichael will start with a three-barrel system to produce about 50 to 70 barrels a year.
Banowsky’s passion for the Railyard dates to around 2003, five years before the Railyard opened in 2008 as a gathering place for arts, entertainment, dining and shopping.
He had started Magnolia Pictures with the art house movie theaters in Boulder, Colo., Denver and Dallas with ambitions to expand to Santa Fe. That didn’t happen, but years later he was selected to bring Violet Crown to the Railyard, another Banowsky art house chain with two other outlets in Austin, Texas, and Charlottesville, Va.
Austin is his base, but he and his wife have sheltered in place in Santa Fe, the city with his most popular Violet Crown.
“It surprised us,” Banowsky said. “It really did. We seemed to tap into something in people who wanted to come into this theater. There is an appreciation for film that runs deep in this market.”