The Outlaw Saloon in Cheyenne had barely closed its doors on Saturday for the last time when a brand-new door opened for the facility.
The Maury and Bonnie Brown Foundation swooped in Monday to buy the popular Cheyenne Frontier Days hangout with an eye toward creating something the Cheyenne community has until now lacked.
That something is a state-of-the-art community rec center with all the bells and all the whistles.
“This will be the YMCA on steroids,” Cheyenne resident Peaches Tyrrell told Cowboy State Daily on Tuesday. Tyrrell is president of the just-formed board that will be overseeing the project.
“Maury has always been really supportive of children and anything children could do before he passed,” she said. “And he had talked about, he knew there were people in town trying to get a rec center. That’s been brought before the city council two or three times, and it was shot down each time. So, he’d often talked about that.”
Outlaw Owners Owed More Than $1.7 Million
Outlaw Saloon has long been a well-known hangout in Cheyenne, going back to the 1970s, when it was known as Cowboy South. The honky-tonk dive bar then earned itself a reputation as a great place to go on a Friday night, with $5 T-bones served on paper plates with plastic cutlery. In more recent times, the bar featured lots of live, local musical acts, as well as boxing and sensational events like little people wrestling.
The bar was a favorite place to go during Cheyenne Frontier Days (CFD), and drew top-tier entertainment during the event, including Wyoming singer-songwriters Chancey Williams and Ned LeDoux, who were just two of the acts on tap during this year’s CFD.
Curtis and Shelby Crowton bought the saloon in 2019 under their limited liability company, Bullseye Operations, and renamed the huge, 22,000-square-foot business the Outlaw Saloon.
The couple could not be reached for comment about the foreclosure sale held on Monday, which aimed to recover more than $1.7 million in delinquent mortgage payments and fees.
YMCA Too Old, Too Landlocked
The Browns have been longtime supporters of the Cheyenne YMCA, which closed its doors this year.
The closure was a deciding factor in the family’s decision to obtain the Outlaw Saloon.
“The family was like, ‘Well now what do we do, dad’s legacy was always the YMCA and the children’s sports and all of that,'” Tyrrell said. “And they actually put in quite a bit of donations to try to help the YMCA. But the bottom line is you could put in as many millions of dollars as they needed, and you are still sitting in a 1958 building with low ceilings, narrow hallways, and no real room for expansion.”
The site was problematic, too. The location had no available space. Any building expansion would take away the parking spaces that the facility also needed to grow.
“The bottom line is it just needed more funds than made sense,” Tyrrell said.
The Outlaw Saloon is adjacent to land that the family of Maury and Bonnie Brown already own.
“They own all the land to the west of the Outlaw, up to almost those apartments that are there on the west side,” Tyrrell said. “So, this just gives them the space they need to realize their vision.”
An Indoor Walking Track At Last
One of the things Cheyenne has lacked is an indoor track where people can go to walk in the winter or when weather is bad. The new rec center will solve that and more.
The drawing board right now includes a long list of amenities that the center must have. An aquatic center, a field house, a gymnasium, multiple basketball and volleyball courts, weight room, boxing center, an indoor walking/running track and a childcare center.
“They want a state-of-the-art recreation center,” Tyrrell said. “And they’ll have classes and activities for seniors as well.”
The name of Cheyenne’s new rec center will be the Maury and Bonnie Brown South Side Community Recreation Center, Tyrrell said, and the first organizational meeting for the board overseeing it is planned in January.
After that, there will be more clarity on details like project costs and timelines.
“That’s when we’re going to make sure that we have everything in the plan that (the family) wants,” she said. “This is all through their eyes, through their vision. Honestly, this family just has a heart of gold. And this was their father’s passion, not necessarily theirs at the time, but this is what they see, and this is what they want. So, they are definitely going to make this happen.”
Economic Development Edge
Having a community rec center has long been seen as an important but lacking amenity for the city of Cheyenne by its advocates.
“I am a supporter of our community getting more indoor recreation and family friendly things to do,” Collins said. “I’m thinking about today. It’s 50 degrees, but the wind’s blowing between 30 and 40 miles an hour. It’s pretty hard for families to get out and do anything. I think one of the constraints we have in quality of life in Cheyenne is not having enough indoor recreational opportunities, and anybody who can help us with that, they’re my heroes.”
Such amenities also help when it comes to economic development and retention efforts.
“One of the problems we have in Wyoming…is our kids are leaving the state,” Cheyenne Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Dale Steenbergen told Cowboy State Daily. “Those community attributes when they fund those, they definitely help us make people understand that we have a good community. It’s a quality community.”
Wyoming is losing 67% of its youth by the time they’re 30, Collins added.
“We need to have more of the amenities so we can keep those young families, that workforce,” he said. “Because when we educate, we do such a great job, and then we send them to Colorado, Utah, Montana, Nebraska, Idaho. We’re sending these great kids that we raised so well, educated so well, up there to work.”
Amenities that improve quality of life are something businesses shopping for a location do consider.
“Those businesses are looking at our community and (asking), ‘How am I going to attract employees to come to my new business?’” Collins said. “So, I think good roads are important, fire departments are critical. But, on top of that, you have to have that quality of life so we can compete with other places.”
Renée Jean can be reached at renee@cowboystatedaily.com.
