“The Bar Baron of Champaign County”
(September 2006)
Online Copy

The Campus Revolution

Toilet paper.

That’s where Scott Cochrane’s campus revolution is going to start, at the essentials, with the necessities of any good bar.

“We’re going to make sure that we keep our places clean and that they’re well run. We want kids to come out early and more often,” says the Champaign-Urbana bar magnate.

Sure, a place like The Clybourne – a Cochrane mainstay campus bar - was never supposed to be stuck with those kinds of problems, of bathrooms looking like they were trashed by sixth-graders. It was going to be nice, a bar and restaurant, and a departure from the sloppy, loud Greek thing. But it devolved: the kitchen was pulled out, the top shelf lowered and now it’s BYOTP.

“I’m trying to bring better, bigger, new things to this town, to bring the level up…I believe in Campustown with all my heart. Downtown is the golden child of the city. It has a little Chicago feeling, but Campustown does too” says Cochrane on a hurried, early weekday morning.

The phones are ringing and his Urbana, Cochrane Enterprises office is humming. His posse is in the midst: his architect, Andrew, is looking over blueprints while his right-hand man Robin sits nearby, quiet, watching.

The man, the campus myth, the Unofficial founder, that “Cochrane”, the bar baron, is right there, at his desk, surrounded by stacks of papers and files and pictures of his wife and three young boys. He’s just started drinking a Red Bull after finishing a large coffee. He talks loud and fast, he gestures and moves like it’s the last day of his life and he’s got to get everything done and get in a workout before it’s too late.

Cochrane is 45 years old, owns or controls ten C-U bars and a real estate company, and has just bought a Ducati. “I don’t have a midlife crisis,” he pleads, then pauses. “I have a constant crisis.”

The Epiphany

This mission, the crisis, was almost finished off a few years ago. He was thinking of getting out of the business, he said. There were the three boys and his age. From what was once a family-run business, Cochrane was the only one left running the bars, too.

His dad has now passed away and his mother is no longer involved with the enterprise. “My sister left the business seven or eight years ago. My brother had a massive coronary at 44 and died suddenly five years ago. I lost my brother, my best friend, and my partner,” described Cochrane.

His mother and father started things at the WigWam, the current location of Firehaus. His dad had only one month’s rent and bought food on credit. They were successful and bought another campus bar, called Cochrane’s and, its eponymous son admits, was ahead of its time. The business expanded and bars were built including The Office, The Office II, The Clybourne and Geo's. Now, Cochrane Enterprises also includes C.O. Daniel’s and Firehaus on campus, Geo’s in Urbana, Fat Daddy’s in Ogden, IL, and Rocks near downtown Champaign.

But something went off, some insight or some vision of grandeur. He just bought Gully’s and Station 211 and is driving ahead. Robin is pushing him out there, he says. They are going to travel to Phoenix and Seattle for new ideas and inspiration. There may be plans to expand into Bloomington, too.

Now in control of five campus bars, and what some would say is the beginning of a monopoly, Cochrane believes things are only getting better for the area. He wants the city to come to campus, to see what his million-plus-dollar investments have built: “I’m trying to make it better. I don’t think the kids realize I’m doing that for them. They’re going to see more,” he explains.

More is the ornate tile, the Brazilian slate, the bright LCD glow under the cathedral drinking dome of Firehaus. More will be a 50-square foot Budweiser sign, complements of Augustus Busch himself. It would have been larger, but city ordinances demand otherwise. More is going to be changing Gully’s from your stained, dim, best friend’s basement into Fubar, your rich uncle’s shiny, svelte, penthouse ultralounge. And there’s plans for downtown, too, as he has acquired the former Lox, Stock, and Bagel building.

The aesthetics are changing, from concrete warehouse-functional to leather lounge-decadent, but is the diversity enough to make kids want to pay $10 covers and $5 drinks? Cochrane scoffs at complaints that prices are going up too much, or that he’s monopolizing. He said he doesn’t care about his public image and that, when you add it up, drink prices in C-U are still substantially lower than the bars of Chicago. He has to earn his money in two hours of business a night, he says, and thinks it is justified to nudge up prices here and there.

The Competition

While Cochrane infuses the new bourgeois extravagance, some bar owners believe in conserving the efficiency model, of filling the loud, drunk crowd into the two-car garage, with maybe some posters on the walls and disco lights on the ceiling.

Eric Meyer, owner of Kam’s, sticks to tradition, to keeping the old look and the old name.

“Kam’s is Kam’s. There is no name that isn’t more recognizable from alumni,” he explains. “We’re careful not to even change things much. The basic structure is very much the same when I first walked in here in 1980…We’re not the most glamorous establishment but we’re very functional,” said a confident Meyer.

As for his growing rival, he said that “Diversifying the cosmetics is probably a smart marketing move on [Cochrane’s] part.” But Meyer, in spite of initial nonchalance, showed some concern. “There’s ten large bars within campus and he has control or ownership of five of them. It’s significant. Real significant.”

Meyer also explained that, on his own accord, Kam’s will be adding food service and a renovated dance club-like basement in the coming months. He said that as long as he keeps running Kam’s like he is supposed to, there is nothing to worry about.

The City

Cochrane’s expansions, nice as they may look, are contrary to the city’s liquor license plans for campus. Dean of Students and Chair of Champaign’s Liquor Advisory Board, William Riley, explained that Campustown liquor licenses were supposed to reduce in number as venues closed over time. But with those bars being bought up and reopened, the same number of facilities remain. Cochrane was removed from the Advisory Board last year, due to his support for Unofficial St. Patrick’s Day, which he feels is a holiday spoiled by those who attend class while drunk.

Moreover, as reported by the Champaign Police Department, two years of Operation Campus/Tap, a state-based law enforcement program designed to curb and prevent college and high-school-aged drinking, of the 1207 arrests since September 11, 2004, 312, or about 25%, were made at Cochrane’s bars. Of the 317 total bar checks, however, only 39, or roughly 12%, were at a Cochrane establishment.

Champaign and its Advisory Board are not watching idly through this reinvigoration. Riley said that the City Council is proposing new ordinances that would expand the state’s Happy Hour Laws. The Happy Hour Laws restrict bar’s drink prices and serving policies.

The local changes would try to eliminate shot girls – who offer pre-purchased drinks within the bar - and to require measured pouring for bartenders. They would also attempt to fix a flaw that allows customers to purchase entire bottles of wine for themselves – a draw of The Clybourne’s Tuesday night “Wine Night” promotion.

Burnout?

“This is a burnout business,” says Cochrane. “You can succumb to theft, women, or men, drugs, gambling, booze, there’s a lot of pitfalls.”

He has not been one of these victims yet, but his breakneck pace, his copious caffeine intake, and the danger of competing against himself could all work against this glorious barroom/cocktail lounge Campustown revolution.

As elaborate, grandiose or manipulative as his plans may seem to some, for Cochrane, his core motive is simple and longstanding. It’s nothing heinous or greedy or absurd, but just admiration and love for his father.

“My father, there was the real Cochrane. My dad started this thing. He gave up everything for us. He worked so much we didn’t get to see him that much. Still, I idolized him and wanted to be like him.”

“That’s why I’m in this business, because I want to be like my dad,” says Cochrane, before charging up and moving out for another full, long day of work, of checking out more properties and creating more designs, of conceiving plans and signing contracts, of running the bar business and, for him, making this place great.


©2009 Tim Peters/All rights reserved