OKC RedPin- Bricktown (Oklahoma City: theatre, construction, restaurant)

[happytown]

Thu July 19, 2007
RedPin lounge strikes new entertainment

Construction is expected to start next week in Bricktown on the RedPin Bowling Lounge. The lounge will offer a new atmosphere for bowlers with 10 lanes for action.

By Trisha Evans
Business Writer


Hoping to capitalize on the recent bowling renaissance, a group of investors are bringing a new entertainment concept to downtown Oklahoma City.

Construction is expected to begin next week on RedPin Bowling Lounge in the basement of the Centennial Building in Bricktown. The 12,000 square-foot space includes a restaurant and bar with 10 bowling lanes.

But don't count on the typical, beer-and-cigarettes, deep-fried food kind of bowling alley. This is posh bowling.

"RedPin promises a unique entertainment experience incorporating contemporary dining, an upscale environment, and the excitement of bowling,” said architect David Wanzer. "We're designing a space that exceeds expectations from a 60-foot video wall at the end of the lanes to couches and cocktail tables in place of the usual plastic furniture. With full dining service throughout, RedPin will truly be a destination unto itself.”

And it's a concept majority owner Erin Brewer said Bricktown needs.

"There are really not a lot of entertainment options for people who aren't interested in going to a club or a bar,” with the exception of Harkins Theatre next door, she said. "We thought dinner and bowling made sense.”

The bowling market is hot right now. Combo restaurant bowling spots have exploded, pioneered by Lucky Strike, which opened its first bowling lounge in 2003, and since has opened a dozen more.

Brewer saw a similar Florida bowling lounge in a magazine three years ago, but seeing the crowds firsthand convinced her.

"They were really popular places,” Brewer said. "It's so new and different. It's just really unique. There's nothing else like it in the state.”

But bowling as the "hip” thing to do is far from new, she said.

"Bowling was really popular in the '20s and '30s,” she said. "It was kind of a martini bar kind of place then, so we're really kind of getting back to its roots.”

And while everyone isn't good at the sport, almost everyone can do it, she said.

Besides bowling, the restaurant and lounge areas will take up another two-thirds of the space. The appetizer-heavy menu takes classic American food and spices it up a bit, Brewer said.

The pizza, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, wings, macaroni and cheese and cotton candy, just to name a few, are the brainchild of Robert Black, the restaurant's consulting chef. Black, the chef responsible for several Oklahoma City restaurant menus, also helped design the kitchen.

And one of RedPin's greatest assets, Brewer said, is its eastward-facing patio. The patio is one of the largest in Bricktown and has the most canal frontage.

"It's going to be a place to see and be seen because there's so much traffic crossing that fountain plaza and it's so visible from there,” she said.

Part-owner Tim Egan said RedPin is more than a bowling alley; it's an entertainment venue that caters to a diverse crowd.

He expects families with kids to come on weekends and afternoons, a corporate lunch crowd during the weekdays and young adults in the evenings.

Trademarking the name was important, Brewer said, because she's hoping the Bricktown bowling lounge will be the first of a few locations

"We're pretty convinced that the experience we're going to create for people and the design of the space, the menu we're creating and the bar menu we're creating. People are going to be sold,” she said.

The venue is scheduled to open by mid-October.



Great for the WHOLE family!!

[peggydavis]

Hey, that sounds pretty good. I haven't been bowling in years, but I think maybe I will try again.

[happytown]

I never liked bowling. But who knows...give me a martini in a posh environment with leather chairs and I might enjoy!