Screenland taps into the Crossroads in a big way

Plans change. Screenland Armour operators Adam Roberts and Brent Miller have learned that lesson on their way to launching their latest Screenland venture: a theater, restaurant, arcade and craft-beer emporium in the Crossroads at 1701 McGee.

“We haven’t been concrete in anything, and that’s probably been our biggest thing,” Roberts says on a chilly Thursday afternoon just inside the future entertainment complex. Saws buzz, hammers pound and drills whir nearby. Ladders and scaffolding tower over the room. He adds, “We’ve been OK with changing things.”

Roberts and Miller’s initial plan called for two movie screens, 100 beer taps and a small brewery. What has emerged is a more concentrated vision.

“You can’t just be a movie theater anymore, unfortunately,” Roberts says. “You can’t just be four walls, 100 seats and a screen and that’s what you’re going to make your money on — and popcorn. You have to be an experience. And for you to be an experience, you can’t just have a half-assed bar, half-assed food or a half-assed arcade. You have to have a real arcade. You have to have a real menu that’s unique and stands on its own. A real bar that stands on its own.”

“We want to differentiate ourselves from the classic Screenland,” Miller says, referring to the now-defunct single-screen property on the other side of the Crossroads, as well as to the mini-chain’s just-shuttered Crown Center outpost. “We’re going to take a new path and say we’re craft beers and arcades and restaurants with a theater attached. Whereas the other ones were, ‘We’re a theater and we also have beer.'”

So the Screenland Crossroads theater and its Tapcade restaurant, arcade and bar have their grand opening Friday, February 20, featuring cult classics and new independent films.

There’s still a lot of work to do before, for instance, the sound of some 30 classic video games (including Ms. Pac-Man, Joust, Q*bert and Street Fighter II) replaces the din of last-minute carpentry. Once those machines come online, they’ll be arranged along the northern wall, which has the beginnings of a mural — featuring Mega Man and Boo from the Super Mario franchise — that bookends a 16-foot television screen. Movie posters (Mallrats, The Terminator, Jackie Brown, etc.) paper the southern wall, and a doorway awaits a Han Solo-in-Carbonite Fathead. Double garage doors face west and open to a 30-seat patio bar that looks out on the downtown skyline.

Forty-eight taps have been installed on the eastern wall, behind a lengthy bar with space for 14-16 people. The bar top itself is a craft-beer beauty on which labels and bottle caps spell out “Tapcade” under resin. Overlooking the taps are two more 9-foot-wide screens, ready to show Mad Men, The Walking Dead, and Chiefs or Royals games.

“We built, basically, a theater in our lobby,” Roberts says. Theater-style lighting illuminates the dining and bar area. And there’s a speaker setup that would make Christopher Nolan happy. “It’s safe to say we have the best sound system of any bar or restaurant in Kansas City,” Roberts says. “Our sound system that we have in here is as good, maybe even better, than what we have in our movie theater.”

The bar stock is set to include 50 different bottles and cans of beer, along with a cocktail menu featuring Dark Horse Distillery drinks.

Piled up wooden chairs, formerly from a Buffalo Wild Wings, are waiting to fill out the dining room, which will seat about 100 people. Roberts and Miller expect the maximum occupancy inside the bar and dining area to be about 175 people.

Two sets of double doors open to the 60-seat, full-service theater, where Roberts and Miller plan to show retro and independent films and hold special events. Inside, custom artwork panels by Erica Kauffman of Atomic Cotton — including Sloth from The Goonies, Evil Ash from the Evil Dead series, Ripley in her Aliens exoskeleton — are going up on the walls.

The theater seats aren’t what you’d expect. They aren’t what Roberts and Miller expected, either. The partners had bought theater-style seats, only to decide against using them with the concrete-paneled floors. So they installed those seats in their Armour auditorium and bought leather executive chairs resembling what you’d see in an office lobby.

“You’re not fixed to whatever the manufacturer says you have to be,” Roberts says of the resulting comfort. “You’re fixed to whatever you’d like to be. So there’s not a bad angle.” The seating is set up on different levels, with wooden railings that act as tables and stand high enough to block the sight of servers shuffling in and out of the theater.

On the top floor of the theater, where a projection booth would typically be (the projector here is suspended from the ceiling), is an open space where Roberts and Miller may put high-top tables for people more interested in ordering another drink or texting a friend than they are in the film.

“The texting thing has always been kind of a nonissue for our customers,” Roberts says. “This will defuse the few situations that we’ve ever had.”

Roberts also believes that they’ve solved the issue with servers in the theater. Instead of getting a bill in the last 10–20 minutes of a film, customers can pay whenever they like.

As for the food, Roberts says he has been thinking about Tapcade’s menu for about six years, ever since a meal at a San Diego burrito shop stuck in his mind.

“What they do differently is, they put french fries in burritos instead of rice,” he says. “It made me look at burritos differently. You can do nontraditional things to the burrito, and it works.”

Roberts plans to offer about eight burritos, including Buffalo, Mexican, Cuban, Philly and Kansas City barbecue (with Slap’s meats, cheddar cheese, sauce, handmade fries and hoppy pickles). Tapcade’s other delicacies include Buffalo-chicken Rangoon (Buffalo chicken wings, fried Rangoon-style). Eventually, there’s going to be a late-night menu for weekends.

“We want to be something for everybody,” Roberts says. “If you want to come watch the Chiefs in the Super Bowl, you can. If you hate sports, you can play arcade games — or at least you’re having good food or you’re in a cool environment that doesn’t feel like a generic sports bar. It’s something different.

“We wish Armour was this,” Roberts adds.

But Roberts and Miller don’t expect to leave Screenland Armour behind.

“Armour is never going to be an afterthought,” Roberts says. “We spent almost three years building it the way that it is. We definitely won’t abandon Armour. Panic Fest, Arts & Crafts — none of those are moving. Armour is what got us here. But you’ll find both our faces at both places.”

Provided plans don’t change again.