Hamburger Mary’s is moving to the Uptown Theater

• Sarah Rae
• Hamburger Mary’s will be taking its gay-friendly concept and drag brunch to midtown in 2014.

If all goes according to plan, the Kansas City franchise of Hamburger Mary’s (the gay-friendly burger restaurant chain that first opened in California in 1972) will move from its current location at 101 Southwest Boulevard to take over the Conspiracy Room space in the historic Uptown Theater at 3700 Broadway. The operators of Hamburger Mary’s Kansas City – Dr. Eric Christensen and Jeff Edmondson, owners of ECCO Holdings – had threatened to move the restaurant two years ago after negotiations with the building’s owners fell through. At that time, the restaurant stayed where it was. Not this time, says one of the owners.

Edmondson told The Pitch that there will be no more negotiations and that ECCO Holdings is committed to moving the restaurant, which opened in 2009, to the Conspiracy Room space by July 2014. “There are problems with the Southwest Boulevard building,” Edmondson says, “and problems with the proposed rent. We are absolutely going to move the restaurant.”

The move will be expensive: the build-out of the Conspiracy Room will require the installation of a new kitchen, but Edmondson believes the additional space (the midtown venue will be considerably bigger than the current Southwest Boulevard location), the additional parking spaces, and the closer access to Westport and the Plaza will dramatically increase the restaurant’s business and visibility.

But the new Hamburger Mary’s will be only one of four new bar and restaurant concepts that ECCO Holdings plans to create in the Uptown Theater and, across the street, at the Uptown Shoppes.

Christensen and Edmondson plan to take over the smaller bar adjacent to the auditorium lobby in the Uptown Theater, currently called the Nowhere Lounge (and only operating on nights when concerts are in the venue), and turn it into a video bar. “We haven’t decided on a name for it yet, but we’ll have that by the end of next week,” Edmondson says. This second bar will be open on a more consistent basis and will also serve food.

The two projects inside the Uptown Theater will be opened in 2014, Edmondson says, but two additional nightspots – a sports bar and a combination Tex-Mex restaurant and microbrewery (featuring country music and western dancing) – are scheduled to be opened by ECCO Holdings by 2015 in the Uptown Shoppes. The sports pub, Edmondson says, will open in part of the massive retail space formerly occupied by the Safeway supermarket. That space, he says, will be divided up.

“We’re sad to leave the Crossroads,” Edmondson says, “but it’s evolving and growing with many upscale businesses and bars. Hamburger Mary’s was a destination point. It was a kind of campy, happy-go-lucky dining experience that didn’t quite fit in. We think we’ll do amazingly better in midtown.”

The Uptown Theater space won’t permit an upstairs rooftop deck that proved popular in the Crossroads location, but Edmondson says there will be an outdoor patio created for the new location.

“It’s a big project. A very big project,” Edmondson says. “But we feel it’s the right time to move. It’s synchronicity, in fact. The Uptown is very eager to work with us, and we’re ready.”