Anchor owner says new restaurant will be a ‘grown-up’ version of the downtown favorite

Schane Gross is ready now to share details about her new restaurant going up at the District 96 development near the Aloft Hotel at K-96 and Oliver.

And she’s also ready to talk about what’s next for her flagship business, The Anchor at 1109 E. Douglas,

First, the new restaurant: Gross said this week that she’s leasing the big new restaurant building that Great Plains Ventures is putting up just west of the Aloft Hotel at 3642 Oliver, and in January, she plans to open a new restaurant there called Rail Hoppers.

The restaurant, she said, will be “a grown-up Anchor.” It’ll have the same basic approach as The Anchor, which has operated in downtown Wichita since 2004, but will operate in a much larger space that has the capacity to serve bigger crowds.

Rail Hoppers, which will have around 200 seats, will serve burgers, sandwiches, salads and 24 beers on tap. It will have its own menu but will incorporate favorites from The Anchor, including the fried tacos, the Reuben, and mac and cheese.

The new restaurant won’t be train themed. Instead, the name is a reference to the kinds of tricks BMX riders and skateboarders perform. Gross has long had a passion for those two sports.

“We’re trying to do something that’s a nice, high-end, restaurant that’s not fine dining and that has a sports edge that’s subtle,” she said.

At the same time that Rail Hoppers is opening, Gross said, another of her long-promised projects will finally get underway: the remodel of The Anchor. For years, Gross has been talking about redoing the interior of her popular downtown restaurant, whose kitchen, she says, is not big enough to properly support all the seating.

Now, she has her loan all lined up, she said, and construction will start in January. The Anchor will close, likely for eight to 10 weeks, while crews open up the wall that separates the two sides of The Anchor, build new restrooms and reconfigure the layout to enlarge the kitchen.

She said she hopes The Anchor will be back up and running by March.

Gross said she was approached a few years ago by Marque Peer, the vice president of development for Great Plains Ventures, who has long said he wanted a restaurant anchor for the District 96 development, which is near the Koch Industries headquarters. At the time she first spoke with Peer, Gross said, she wasn’t able to finance building a new restaurant, but eventually, Peer approached her with the idea of running a restaurant in a building his company owned.

It seemed like a good way to expand, Gross said, although she knew she couldn’t call a new business The Anchor if she ever hoped to expand or possibly franchise it — which she does. There are just too many businesses, restaurants, even churches across the country that use “Anchor” for a name.

The new restaurant will also have an outdoor patio on its east side that is open to the inside by a big garage door. Gross said she’ll soon be sharing details about a new team of chefs she’s assembled to run both of her restaurant kitchens.

Gross said she’s been keeping a low profile since the COVID-19 pandemic but is looking forward to a busy 2023 full of new beginnings.

“It’s going to be fun,” she said. “I’m excited because I kind of went into stasis, and it’s been a minute, even socially,” she said. “This is me coming out.”

Stay tuned for more updates on Rail Hoppers and on the remodel at The Anchor in the coming months.