19 minute read
Small business owners and entrepreneurs Jon and Renee Jelenek
The phrase, “Not all who wander are lost” is a lot of things ...
... it’s line is from the poem “All That Glitters Is Not Gold” in “The Lord of the Rings” by J.R.R. Tolkien; it’s a popular tattoo; a trendy wall art piece - and for Jon Jelinek, it might just be words he’s actually lived.
Jelinek, 54, is a small business owner, entrepreneur, music lover, concert promoter, philanthropist, Mr. Fixit, veteran, mountain biker, historian - and local preservationist. He and his wife, Renee, own the Paramount Building, which houses The Paramount Cafe. Paramount Ballroom and The Second Floor, Cheyenne’s first co-working office space. The couple - Renee is the Second Floor’s interior designer and in-house idea factory - also own Cheyenne’s The Lincoln music venue, as well as a Plato’s Closet in Fort Collins.
Not too shabby for a guy who, well, might have wandered a bit on his run-up to high school graduation - and beyond
“I had no clue what I wanted to do after high school, not one clue,” Jelinek said. “So I went into the army - actually probably the single best decision I have ever made, except for marrying Renee.
“Like I said, I had no idea what I wanted to do, so I ended up with the really great decision to go into the army, which I did for 20 years, between active duty and working full-time for the National Guard. I ended up spending time in Washington, in Iraq, in Hawaii, a little time in Georgia, a little time in Oklahoma - you could say I got around a bit.”
From Wanderer to Entrepreneur
Jon and Renee Jelenek were both raised in Laramie.
“I was born and raised just over the hill,” Jelinek said. “Renee was a military brat and came there, gosh, I think in eighth grade. We didn’t know of each other’s existence until we met at the same bar - the Cowboy Saloon - I was a bartender and she was a cocktail waitress.”
The pair got married, and immediately, Jelinek said, fell into the “What are we doing with our lives?, What bills are we going to pay on time?, the old paycheckto-paycheck grind.” Both held retail management jobs at the time.
“It was really sucking the life out of us,” he said.
The couple decided to sell their place in Fort Collins, Colo. and move to Cheyenne, to open up a Once Upon A Child clothing franchise. Renee and her sister ran the business, while Jelinek continued with his army career. It was the birth of their son, Riley, in 1998, “Which forever changed our lives, right then and there.”
“Renee literally got up in the middle of the night to change our son’s diaper, and said, ’Oh my God, when was the last time I actually did this?’” Jelinek said. “He was either at daycare, or with a babysitter because we were always working - and that was the big catalyst of ‘Something’s gotta change.’”
Then September 11, 2001 happened.
“I found myself right back on active duty,” he said. “I went to the desert, spent my time there, and after I got back, I became a government contractor for several years.”
From Once Upon A Child, the Jelineks acquired some Plato’s Closet clothing stores, which gave the couple some autonomy over their lives - and some financial breathing room. But the grind continued.
In 2011, the Jelineks started a nonprofit, the Alternative Arts Project, an after-school program that used music to engage and enlighten young minds. The program provided musical instruments, instruction, music sharing and access to local concerts for participants. After running the program for three years, the Jelineks took a break to explore a few other ventures, but the program is back, better than ever, at Cheyenne’s The Lincoln music venue (more about that a little later).
“The Alternative Arts Project is really what ended up bringing downtown,” Jelinek said. “We were giving free guitar lessons to teens after school. The Hinds Building owners were gracious enough to let us in to
by Thom Gabrukiewicz, Wyoming Department of Education
give the lessons and it just so happens that right across the street there was this little coffee shop, it was just a really cool little place. It’s just kind of funny how life works sometimes - after going in and getting coffee before giving lessons, or talking to parents about giving lessons at the shop, we found out that it might just be for sale - Renee got this random text message in the middle of the night, “Hey, do you want to buy the Paramount?’”
And two weeks later, in 2013, the Jelineks owned a coffee shop.
“After living in Cheyenne for 14 years, and not knowing a lot of people, not really feeling connected - all of a sudden we found this community of people in the downtown area,” he said. “It’s like we finally found our people. Since we’ve been downtown, we’ve made some great friends and we’ve met some of the greatest people you could ever hope to meet. And we really feel part of the community.”
“Jon and Renee have been the critical catalyst that has helped change the way our Downtown functions, operates and feels,” said Dominec Bravo, President and CEO of Visit Cheyenne and Cheyenne Downtown Development Authority. “Although still rooted into our Western heritage, they have brought a fresh perspective and expanded the experiences visitors and locals can have in the downtown area.”
A year later, the Jelineks bought the entire Paramount building; it was built as the Capitol Avenue Theater in 1905 and became a gathering palace for high school graduations and other community events, including stage plays. Once, Renee Jelinek said, a rendition of “Ben Hur” was staged, and stagehands built a giant treadmill to run a real, live horse in the production.
The theater section burned down in 1915. The
theater section was remodeled into a movie house in the 1930s called the Paramount and was used as a movie theater until another fire occurred in 1981. The projector room still bears scars from the fire, as the walls and projectors burned. “Since we’ve been here, it’s all about creating environments for people to come together,” Jelinek said. “And sure, we’ve been able to benefit, since we get to be around really great people all the time, and that’s such a bonus for us. We just kinda decided to become part of the solution - these things aren’t being created, so let’s create them and hope like heck that other people want to come down and do them.”
Patrons enjoy an evening at the Paramount Ballroom. And Then, The Pandemic
It comes at no surprise that the leisure and service industries were the hardest hit during the COVID-19 pandemic that showed up in America in February of 2020. Opening a bar or restaurant is a leap of faith in-and-of-itself; even in normal economic conditions, as many as 61 percent of independently operated restaurants fail within three years of opening, according to a widely cited 2005 analysis from Ohio State University researchers. The pandemic has made those odds worse. After months-long bans on indoor dining and a slow rebound as people became vaccinated and started going out in public, restaurant sales across the country were down $240 billion in 2020 from their expected levels, according to estimates from the National Restaurant Association. Some 80,000 restaurants have temporarily or permanently closed since the start of the pandemic, down from 110,000 at the peak of the pandemic.
Restaurant Industry Facts at a Glance:
About $799 billion: Restaurant industry sales in 2021, down $65 billion from 2019’s pre-pandemic levels.
Some 14.5 million: Restaurant industry employees at the end of 2021, down 1 million from pre-pandemic levels.
About 90,000: Restaurant locations that are temporarily or permanently closed.
Nine in 10 restaurants have fewer than 50 employees (and that includes The Paramount Cafe and Paramount Ballroom).
“It was a challenge, it was a struggle,” Jelinek said. “And we did the things we needed to do to survive. And now we can face the future and come back even better.”
And the recovery continues, according to the National Restaurant Association:
• The foodservice industry is forecast to reach $898 billion in sales in 2022. • The foodservice industry workforce is projected to grow by 400,000 jobs, for total industry employment of 14.9 million by the end of 2022.
• More than half of restaurant operators said it would be a year or more before business conditions return to normal.
• Fifty-one percent of adults say they aren’t eating at restaurants as often as they would like, which is an increase of six percentage points from before the pandemic.
“The restaurant and foodservice industry has adapted and is carrying on with absolute resilience, so we’re optimistic about the path toward recovery in the coming year,” said Marvin Irby, Interim President & CEO of the National Restaurant Association. “We still have work to do to ensure that those operators struggling the most can survive. The Association will continue to champion the necessary government support needed at the federal and local levels to help keep these businesses — cornerstones of our communities — on a path to better days.”
Jelinek said he’s optimistic, too.
“I hate hearing people say there’s nothing to do in Cheyenne,” he said. “Because, man, all you have to do is open your eyes. The shops and the restaurants that are coming in, there’s something for anyone to enjoy. And it just keeps getting better - there’s this spirit of getting back to normal, and I think that helps us all. I mean, let’s face it, we’ve all been so down during this, but let’s rise up, let’s get back to all the things we love to do, and that means coming to downtown Cheyenne, Wyoming.”
The Rise of The Lincoln
The Jelineks were looking for new commercial opportunities when they stumbled on a listing for The Lincoln Theater, at the time, Cheyenne’s only dollar movie house. The building was completed in 1928 (and was financed by Wyoming Senator Francis Warren, who died shortly after it opened). It was the first theater in Cheyenne to play talking movies. Built in the art-deco style, the interior originally featured the main level and balcony with 1,221 seats. In 1953, it was remodeled to accommodate two screens.
Buying the building, with plans to change it into a music venue, started off a little rough.
In 1964, Jimmy Stewart and Carroll Baker and other stars arrived by train for the premiere of the John Ford film, “Cheyenne Autumn,” at downtown’s Lincoln Theater. Now, The Lincoln is a music venue owned by Jon and Renee Jelinek.
“Yeah, so, those first couple of months were a little rocky, as people accused us of killing the only cheap movie theater option in all of Cheyenne,” Jelinek said. “There was a huge misconception in how that worked. But bottom line, we looked at the price, figured that we could do it - but there in the ad was a blurb that really jumped out at us, ‘The owner would be willing to donate a significant portion of the sales price to a nonprofit.’ Well, we had one of those.”
Another key sentence that jumped out - “Whoever buys this property will have to sign an agreement that they won’t show any movies in the theater for 25 years.’” Jelinek said. “OK, fine. But people have to realize, there was another buyer interested who was going to buy the place, tear down The Lincoln and put up a parking structure. We felt like a live music venue was a lot more fun than that. I kinda think we helped save a historic building downtown.”
The building’s transformation took several months - and a lot of donations to offset construction costs.
“We asked the Cheyenne community for help, and they really stepped up,” Jelinek said. “Just the demo we needed to do was $60,000 and people gave. We had raffles, we did Go Fund Me fundraisers, we did a lot of stuff to raise the money. But it all worked out.”
It also didn’t help that the venue’s doors opened in August of 2020 - smack dab in the middle of a global pandemic; the theater seats 1,250, but due to COVID-19 protocols in Wyoming at the time, the venue was restricted to 250 people.
“We needed to get it open,” Jelinek said. “We needed to pay bills. But it was an interesting time, since there weren’t a lot of bands touring, so it gave us time to learn all the things we didn’t know about running a music venue.”
The Lincoln is just now starting to find its footing, and has hosted such music diversity like Denver indie rock band Wildermiss, psychobilly legend Reverend Horton Heat, rapper Nef The Pharaoh and funk-rock favorites War - and looks ahead to acts like Billy Bob Thornton and The Boxmasters, country music outlaw Orville Peck, country music legend Tracy Byrd, Bone Thugs-N-Harmony, and rock acts Daughtry, The Dead South and Puddle of Mudd. The venue also hosts Battle of the Bands nights, were local music acts can perform on a real, live stage, with a real sound system and lighting - and concertgoers can see what talent Cheyenne has to offer for a $5 cover charge, with proceeds going to that night’s winner as prize money.
And through the Alternative Arts Project, Cheyenne teens can experience live music for free.
“We set aside 50 tickets for every show we do, all of them, and kids 15-18, all they have to do is go online and request a ticket to the show they want to go to,” Jelinek said. “And when they show up at the door, we’ll give them a free ticket.”
More About the Paramount
The Paramount Gallery
The Paramount Gallery is a local artistic coffee space that provides a free platform for local artists to showcase their work. Exhibitions require 12-15 large to medium sized pieces and are shown for one month at a time, beginning the second Thursday of each month.
We do not sell any artwork outright, but will refer prospective buyers to the artist directly. Fill out this form if you are interested in exhibiting in our gallery.
The Paramount Stage
The Paramount Stage is a pretty great little feature of the shop. Acts are booked on a first-come firstserve basis and are free for musicians and free to the public. Instead of being a music venue, the Paramount is a coffee shop which happens to have music sometimes – therefore we do invite tip jars at our performances, but we do not charge a cover for any shows.
If you think your act might be a good fit for our shop, fill out this form.
The Paramount Ballroom
We love our building. Seriously. It is everything a historic building should be. It has housed a hotel, a theatre, another theatre, a millinery (a ladies hat store), and survived two fires. With everything we have done to the building, we have tried to stay true to the original architecture and make our concept adapt to the space, rather than make the space adapt to the concept. We have tried to incorporate our history in new ways – like our community table that we built from the old marquee, and our menu which is encased in an original program from when Ben Hur was performed here in 1905. All of our signature cocktails are named after shows that played in the Capitol Ave Theatre, that was built here in 1904.
We hope the Ballroom continues the legacy of this being the gathering spot for Cheyenne, and the place that our community is built.
“Opening the Lincoln Theater as the newest music venue in Cheyenne during the COVID-19 pandemic was a strategic risk that paid dividends to our community, ‘’ Bravo said. “It has been so amazing to be able to market all of the great and diverse bands and performers that have played at the Lincoln that has set our Downtown apart from many in the region. Jon is as close to perfect for downtown improvements as you can get.
“With his military background that makes him strategic and unwavering to his music and artistic persona that emotes an impressive creativity and vision all coupled with a person that makes it happen, we are honored to have Jon and his amazing wife, Renee, in our downtown.”
The Lincoln is just now starting to find its footing, and has hosted such music diversity like Denver indie rock band Wildermiss, psychobilly legend Reverend Horton Heat, rapper Nef The Pharaoh and funk-rock favorites War - and looks ahead to acts like Billy Bob Thornton and The Boxmasters, country music outlaw Orville Peck, country music legend Tracy Byrd, Bone Thugs-N-Harmony, and rock acts Daughtry, The Dead South and Puddle of Mudd.
The Last Word
Jelinek said it’s a dad thing - he made fun of his dad, and his son Riley, 24, (who is set to graduate college with a music degree) made fun of him - but it’s kind of the truth; the dad-ism exists out there that says, “Hell, I don’t care what you do with your life, as long as you’re happy. Do something that makes you happy, then you’ll never work a day in your life.”
“Kind of corny, right?” Jelinek said. “But there’s some truth to that. Find something you like to do. I’ve talked to a few young entrepreneurial groups in high school and college, and it’s all about finding your passion, what you really want to do. Because if you’re going to be an entrepreneur, you are going to eat, sleep, breathe - shower - work. Everything revolves around work. It’s really interesting, it becomes such a part of your life.”
Jelinek said he would recommend that students take full advantage of Career and Technical school organizations while in high school and college, if they so choose to go the college degree route. Then, go out and experience life - dissect things, bring back ideas that might work where you want to set up shop. Have a plan, and stick with it. Learn how to set up a corporation in the state you plan to live in,and study, study, study.
“Know what you’re getting into,” he said. “Have a solid idea and pursue it, go for it. If Renee and I would have listened to family and friends, we definitely wouldn’t be doing this. But that would have been a huge mistake.”
And finally, never say never to big ideas. Be open to whatever comes at you.
“Truthfully, some mornings, it feels really surreal for me,” Jelinek said. “What we are able to do - I was definitely not the model student growing up - I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life at 17. I dunno, I feel like such a regular guy, and Renee and I are built to work hard. We started out with nothing, and now we are here at this moment. Surreal. Yeah, that’s the word. It all feels kinda surreal some mornings. It’s life. It’s your life. Live it. Don’t be afraid to jump off the high dive into the pool, without a net - and pray for a soft landing.”
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