E-Malt.com News article: USA, IL: Other Half Brewing opening in Bridgeport's renovated Ramova Theatre

The reopened Ramova Theatre will also be home to Chicago’s newest brewery.

Other Half Brewing will open a brewery and taproom inside the Ramova Theatre, the historical movie house at 3520 S. Halsted St. that will reopen as a concert venue and dining destination.

The redeveloped Ramova Theatre is set to open in the coming months after sitting vacant for over three decades. Centered around an 1,500-capacity concert venue, the theater complex will also include a reopened Ramova Diner, Other Half Ramova, a beer garden and an events space.

After deciding to fold a brewery into the redevelopment plans, developer Tyler Nevius turned to the beer makers at the taproom he frequented when he lived in Brooklyn: Other Half.

“As soon as I tried [Other Half] and realized they were a mile and a half away, I think I was there almost every Saturday,” said Nevius, who is spearheading the Ramova redevelopment with Emily Nevius, his wife. “This idea of creating a music venue and a brewery was really developed organically with them to a great extent.”

Other Half opened in New York City in 2014, garnering a following despite the “smallest taproom anyone has ever seen,” said Sam Richardson, one of three co-founders and brewmaster at Other Half.

Other Half has since added a second New York City location in Manhattan and has expanded to New York’s Finger Lakes area, Buffalo, Washington, D.C. and Philadelphia.

The brewery chose to expand to Chicago and join the Ramova project for one primary reason: music. Being connected to a music venue allows for unique collaborations and the fostering of community around craft beer, an important goal of Other Half’s, said Matt Mohanan, brewery co-founder with Richardson and Andrew Burman.

“It’s an incredible story,” Monahan said of the Ramova’s redevelopment. “It just seems like a natural evolution for what we’re doing. Adding a music component to what we do, we’re just lucky to be here and excited.”

Other Half Ramova will include a taproom that runs along Halsted Street. Behind the taproom will be a glass wall where visitors can check out the brewery production floor below.

Beers will be made on site, with around 20 draft lines available in the taproom. The final roster of beers is still being planned, though there will be concert venue staples including IPAs and lagers, the Other Half team said.

“We’re just going to make sure that the beer choices on those bars are better than anywhere else you can go when you can see a show,” Richardson said.

Other Half Ramova will neighbor the Ramova Grill, which is reopening after it ended an 82-year run in business in 2012. Ramova Grill’s revival is being helmed by Kevin Hickey and Brandon Phillips, partners in acclaimed Bridgeport restaurant The Duck Inn. Hickey, a Bridgeport native, and Phillips will oversee the culinary and beverage programs at the grill, respectively.

The grill will feature a menu of snackable dishes plus sandwiches, fries and chili, for which the original Ramova Grill was famous. Ramova Grill will have seating for 20, and its full menu will be available to taproom patrons.

Housing a brewery under the same roof as a restaurant and concert venue will allow for unique experiences and product collaborations, Nevius said.

“You’re going to see some cool collaboration, some cool products, some cool beer offerings that you probably haven’t seen anywhere else before,” he said. “That is what’s the most exciting to me.”

The Ramova opened in 1929 as a sister theater to the Music Box Theatre in Lakeview. The interior was designed in the “atmospheric” style of the 1920s, with an auditorium meant to resemble Spanish courtyards and stars on deep blue ceilings that would glimmer before each movie.

It closed in 1985.

The city bought the theater in 2001 to preserve it for development, but officials struggled for years to find developers who were willing to invest in rehabilitating the deteriorating structure.

In 2020, the theater was sold to a venture led by Nevius’ Our Revival Chicago LLC. The $30 million project broke ground in 2021.


08 November, 2023