Longtime downtown restaurant remodels, reopens as Stampede

Todd Fiechter scrubs the silver aluminum walls of an ice trough Friday behind the counter of his new Prairie City bar. He’s from Ankeny, and new to the small Jasper County town. Fiechter said he’s not afraid of hard work and the pub’s Prairie City-native employees told him the bar was about to fill with Friday night traffic.

“You’ll have to excuse me if I keep working. They tell me it’s going to be busy tonight and I want to be ready,” he said with a grin. “You tell me where we start.”

Fiechter purchased the former UpTown Restaurant and Lounge from Jeff and Shelley Brouwer last month and reopened Friday as Stampede. The restaurant had been on the market since November 2015, when Brouwers decided to move closer to their eldest son and daughter-in-law. UpTown originally opened as Happy Endings in 2007, by Jeff Brouwer’s parents John and Janice Brouwer.

After three weeks of construction, Fiechter has invested roughly $9,000 in Stampede. He painted walls, added a wood-tile dance floor, remodeled the bathrooms, added granite table tops and Bison/Mustang wall decor in the dining rooms. But what he’s most proud of is what he found underneath the walls. Fiechter and a small team of his buddies removed the old wood paneling of UpTown, restored and exposed the building’s brick.

“I wanted to expose the natural brick, because that’s the brick from the early 1900s when this building was built,” he said. “A guy actually put this brick here and they didn’t have machines like we have now. So a guy actually laid this brick with his hands. I wanted to bring a little bit of the history back to it.”

Fiechter is originally from Waukee. He’d been in auto sales for 15 years before buying Stampede, most recently at Karl Chevrolet in Ankeny. Fiechter is a self-described people person, but while selling cars he wasn’t really his own boss. Then he remembered his favorite job — bar tending and waiting tables at the Raccoon River Drawing Co. He said he’d been “looking for a deal” for nearly two years and when the UpTown offer presented itself, Fiechter took a few trips to Prairie City and jumped.

“I just kept telling my wife, I don’t love my job,” he said. “My wife looked right at me and said ‘well that’s your own fault.’ I looked at her kind of funny and said ‘what do you mean it’s my fault?’” She pointed out you pick what you do. I said, ‘by God, you’re right.’ So three days later I came home and told her ‘honey, I bought a bar.’”

In the 1970s and 80s, Waukee was a quarter of its current size and Fiechter was taken by the Prairie City’s small town feel. He said he loves that bison live just down the road in the national wildlife refuge and enjoys the marker of PCM’s mustang. So when trying to put his own brand on the long time Prairie City establishment, Fiechter knew he wanted something thematic.

“I’ve been out here several times and I had about 100 names written down — Prairie City Pub, Stampede Bar and Grill— just boring normal stuff. Then I woke up one day and said just ‘Stampede’ to keep with Prairie City, the Mustangs, bison and the Neal Smith trail,” he said.

This is also reflected in Stampede’s new menu which leads with a Smokey Bison Burger. Stampede’s new offerings also include steak night on Wednesdays, a Friday night fish fry, and a self-proclaimed “best lasagna in the whole world.” Fiechter will also serve hot roast beef sandwiches daily and has his own Taco Tuesday. It’s all prepared by head cook Janeen Brouwer Marchant, who is remaining from the restaurant/bar’s Happy Endings and UpTown days.

According to Marchant and Fiechter, Stampede’s first Saturday night was a packed affair, and they thanked the community in a post onthe business’ Facebook Page.

“Wow, what a night,” Fiechter wrote. “Thank you to everyone who came out yesterday to support Stampede on our first day in business. Can’t believe how busy we were. The number of people who showed up was incredible.”

In the future, the new Stampede owner hopes to host a poker and pool league, add karaoke and feature bands and a comedian every other weekend.

Although the businessman isn’t native, he won’t be a commuter for long, as Fiechter, his wife and their baby-on-the-way plan to move to Prairie City soon and make the town their workplace and home.

“One of my first days here I saw two horses walking through town during rush hour, which would be 5:15 p.m.,” he said. “I thought, ‘that’s a place I want to live. A place you can ride a horse through town at 5:15 at night and they’re no red lights.’”

Stampede is open 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Tuesday through Thursdays and 11 a.m. to bar close Friday through Saturday.

Contact Mike Mendenhall at mmendenhall@myprairiecitynews.com