When WBC Delano opens this week, customers will find relics of the building’s storied past
Wichita Brewing Company will open its new — and surprisingly large — new two-story brewpub in Delano on Wednesday, and Wichita will no doubt be talking about the rooftop patio that overlooks West Douglas, the garage doors that will open both stories to the spring air, and the sleek design that utilizes the buildings’ already-existing wood, metal and concrete.
But there’s also another story to tell, says Jake Ramstack — the commercial broker with InSite Real Estate Group who brought the right people together to make the project happen (and in the process became a partner in the Delano business.)
Ramstack, like many people who work on renovations of 100+-year-old buildings, has become fascinated by the lives that WBC Delano’s new spaces lived before their most recent transformation. He’s even created a plastic binder filled with old photos of the buildings as well as pictures showing the various stages of construction since workers first started gutting the buildings in 2023.
The new bar combines two longtime Wichita addresses — 901 W. Douglas and its neighbor, 905 W. Douglas. Ramstack likes to tell the serendipitous story of how the WBC project came together, but he also loves to share the stories he’s collected about the businesses that once occupied buildings, which first went up in the early 1900s.
They include Wichita’s first suburban movie theater, a cluster of apartments rented to local college students, a record store, and an educational tool business that was destroyed by a 1974 fire.
That fire destroyed the second story of the 901 building, making way for a rooftop bar to be added 50 years later.
Old buildings, new vision
For the past year, Wichita has watched as crews slowly began to transform the two buildings at the southwest corner of Douglas at Handley Street from nondescript neighbors into a bright and modern bar with new glass and garage doors, new metal awnings, and a fresh coat of tasteful black-and-white paint.
People who frequent Delano wondered what was happening at the buildings, one of which (901 on the corner) had been vacant for some time, and the other of which (905, to the west) had been empty since the summer of 2023, when the owners of Spektrum Muzik lost their lease and moved around the corner to 112 S. Handley.
Ramstack revealed that, behind the scenes, stars were quietly aligning all that time but the owners resisted making anything public until their lease was finalized, which didn’t happen until late in the process.
It all started when WBC Delano’s landlord, who Ramstack said prefers not to be named, bought 901 W. Douglas, intending to remodel it into an upscale bar and restaurant space he could lease to the right client. Ramstack had helped the landlord buy the building and describes him as a “visionary” who had architects sketch out his vision for the space almost immediately after he purchased it.
Meanwhile, Ramstack also had been talking with one of his college fraternity friends, Ben Hesse, about a project that Hesse and some partners were working on. They’d agreed to license the WBC brand and were planning to open a new location, but they were looking in Derby and Andover.
Wichita learned last week that the partnership Hesse was involved in was led by Ben Simon, the son of Freddy’s Frozen Custard & Steakburgers co-founder Randy Simon. The partnership group, which also included Joe Fernandez and Hesse, also revealed last week that they’d purchased the two existing WBC brewpubs, at 8815 W. 13th St. and 535 N. Woodlawn.
Ramstack was the common link between the two, and he showed the building owner’s architectural drawing to the WBC partnership group. They loved it but told Ramstack that they really wanted a space with a rooftop bar.
The building owner tried many different ways to design a rooftop bar for the one-story 901 W. Douglas space. But no matter what architects tried, access to the roof sliced the interior space in half. It just wouldn’t work.
Then, the building owner had an idea: He’d also buy the building next door — at 905 W. Douglas — and combine the two buildings into one giant space. The WBC partners were in, so Ramstack brokered a deal for the owner to purchase the second building, necessitating Spektrum to move after 10 years. Locals became even more curious about the corner’s goings on.
Construction started and stopped several times before, a few months ago, paper went up in the windows blocking views into the building, a sure sign that something was underway. The WBC partners finally announced their plans in early January.
Suburban theater
The building owner gutted the spaces, but he and his new tenants wanted to find ways to recycle pieces of the historic buildings and spotlight them in the new space.
In the process of planning how to do this, they became curious about the history of the spaces.
Both were built near the turn of the 20th century. An article that appeared in The Wichita Beacon in August of 1905 announces Wichitan Fred Farmer’s intention to build “a fine brick building” at Douglas and Handley. In the article, Farmer also shared plans for another building to go up directly to the west.
The first tenant at the corner building, 901 W. Douglas, was a drug store called Cole & Thomas. It opened in 1906 and three years later added a soda fountain. A dentist’s office eventually opened on the second floor.
But the most interesting tenant to have occupied the space — and the one that Ramstack was most excited about — was the West Theatre. When it opened in 1924, it was considered Wichita’s first “suburban theatre” — because back then, Delano was the suburbs.
It was owned by O.F. Sullivan, a onetime mayor and Wichita city commissioner, who built and operated several Wichita theaters during his life, including the Civic, the Tower, the Palace, the Crawford and the Crest. He also built the 81 Drive-In.
But the West Theatre was Sullivan’s first, and when it opened, he served as projectionist while his wife, Mary Jane, worked as a cashier.
The West Theatre appears to have lasted into the mid 1950s. After it closed, the space was occupied briefly by a carryout restaurant, then a music store then an auto body shop. When crews tore up the building to begin constructing the new WBC space last year, Ramstack said, they uncovered the sloping floor that would have led to the movie screen on the building’s south wall.
The other big development at 901 W. Douglas happened in 1974. By then, the building was occupied by a business called Educational Tool Co. Inc., and on Friday, March 30, a fire broke out in the building shortly after 6 p.m., causing $200,000 in damages. At least 30 firefighters responded as flames leaped 20 feet into the air. A crowd of 3,000 people lined Douglas and Handley to watch and saw the building’s roof cave in. Among them were two girls who lived in the dorm-like apartments on the second floor who had escaped wearing only their bathrobes, according to a story in the Wichita Eagle.
The building was rehabilitated, but the second story had to go. Fifty years later, WBC Delano has added a rooftop bar on the building halved by that fire.
Several other businesses operated in 901 W. Douglas the space after the fire, including a gymnastics school in the late 1970s and Wichita Valley Hope, an organization that provided drug and alcohol addiction treatment. It operated at the address from 1982 until at least 2010, and it was the site of meetings for many local clubs and organizations.
Meanwhile, 905 W. Douglas had its own string of interesting tenants, starting in 1907 with a business that sold buggies. By 1908, it was home to C.E. Winger & Co, a store that sold groceries, dry goods, shoes and “men’s furnishings.”
After that, the building housed a string of different grocery stores and markets until, in the 1960s, it was taken over by a R.E.’s Novelties, which occupied the space until 1986. That’s when the store became home to its longest-term tenant: Central Plains Novelty. That store became a Wichita favorite that sold gag gifts and provided costume rentals until it closed in 2014. Spektrum Music moved in almost immediately after the novelty shop left.
The second floor of the 905 space also had three larger apartments, but they were deteriorating and looked like they hadn’t been occupied in decades, Ramstack said.
Merging old and new
The designers of WBC Delano did their best to incorporate elements of the historic buildings, Ramstack said.
The front of the bar is lined with the structure’s original bricks, which were knocked out to make way for the building’s big new windows and garage doors.
The designers also left the aging paint exposed when a stairway that used to lead up to the apartments on the second floor of the 905 space was removed. Light green and red paint is visible but is chipping away, but instead of painting over the aging colors, the designers painted other things in the space to match.
Ramstack’s favorite touch, though, involves the wooden “stringers” — horizontal boards that support the ceiling — that were exposed when crews gutted both sides of the building.
The boards, made from 100-year-old “first-growth” wood, were all taken down, Ramstack said. But after the new ceiling was installed, they were put back up — just for aesthetic purposes.
Some of the stringers, though, were cut up and used in different places around the new brewpub. Benches that line the windows on the first floor were made using the boards, as were pieces of the bar and a massive door that separates the bar from an event space.
Many of the historic pieces, Ramstack said, are there because of the architects the owners hired. They purposely requested an all-female crew from Shelden Architecture, he said, because they wanted the space to be warm and inviting — the kind of place moms and kids would like as much as dads.
“You don’t want a bunch of dudes starting a brewery and just getting to design it themselves,” he said with a laugh. “We needed soft touches. We filtered everything through, ‘Would our families want to be here? Would our wives want to be here?”
Business reborn
The completed space will be revealed to the public when the new WBC opens on Wednesday, Feb. 26.
But WBC Delano will operate a bit differently from its east- and west-side counterparts.
For one, the owners have slimmed the menu down significantly —and will likely do the same at the other two restaurants eventually. The streamlined menu includes 10 specialty pizzas along with a build-your-own option. (The other two brewpubs offer around 25 different pizzas.)
The appetizer list has been reduced from 10 to six — pepperoni rolls and wings both made the cut. Most of the sandwiches remain, too, but pasta dishes and calzones are gone.
The way people get their food also will be different at WBC Delano. Though the east- and west-side restaurants are full service, customers in Delano will order their food at the counter when they arrive then choose a table. Runners will deliver beer and food to the tables.
The centerpiece of the lower-level space is a big, domed, rotating pizza oven covered in red mosaic tiles. The kitchen will cook everything in this oven, Ramstack said. There’s no back kitchen.
The new space also has shiny brew tanks set up just behind the bar, and although they’re not in operation yet, they will be soon, Ramstack said. The downstairs and upstairs will each have their own bars, and each will have 20 taps, most dedicated to beer but two offering house-made root beer and club soda. Delano’s WBC also will offer at least 10 different wines and a menu of craft cocktails.
The Delano brewpub seats about 200 inside, and the designers purposely filled the space with lots of tables that will seat big parties of six to 10 or more. They want big groups to come hang out together after baseball games or for extended families to meet up for dinner.
The new WBC also has three patios — the rooftop bar on the upper level (likely to be the most coveted seat in town during this year’s Delano St. Patrick’s Day parade) — is filled with large picnic tables and offers unique views of downtown in the distance and Douglas below. There’s also a patio downstairs on the building’s south side and another one right above it. Together, the patio spaces will seat another 150 people.
The new owners of WBC aren’t finished with the Delano space, either. The landlord also owns the space south of the buildings, all the way back to Texas Street, as well as a metal building that occupies it.
The west side of the big lot will serve as parking. The east side will eventually be turned into a massive beer garden that will have its own bars, its own restrooms and a stage for concerts. Shipping containers will be involved in the design, Ramstack said.
The owners want to get the new restaurant up and running, he said, and then they’ll focus on the beer garden. The metal building is already wired and plumbed and ready to use.
“It’s on the docket,” he said. “We’ll get that open as soon as we possibly can.”
Starting Wednesday, the hours for the WBC Delano will be 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Sundays through Thursdays; 11 a.m. to midnight on Fridays; and 10 a.m. to midnight on Saturdays.
WBC Delano menu
This story was originally published February 25, 2025 at 2:40 PM.
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