A sleek new cocktail lounge has just been added in Delano, and it will have many uses

Odd Fellow Hall opened last summer in a historic ballroom on the top level of the Delano building that houses the popular Leslie Coffee Co., and since then, it’s been home to stylish chef’s dinners, concerts, markets and lots and lots of weddings.

Now, the owners have added onto the event space a plush cocktail lounge that will give the business more flexibility and even allow it to open the venue up to the general public from time to time.

Odd Fellow Hall’s owners have just taken over an adjoining space directly north of the ballroom that previously held offices and transformed it into a swank lounge that offers seating for 50 to 60 people, said Cody Lonergan, who along with Jimmy Vo manages the venue at 930 W. Douglas.

The room, which has a full bar, leather sofas and chairs, and the same big windows as the main ballroom, is called Rebekah’s Lounge at Odd Fellow Hall. The name is a reference to The Daughters of Rebekah, which was the female counterpart group to the Independent Order of Odd Fellows. The building the venue occupies was built as a home for Wichita’s West Side Odd Fellows in 1911.

The new lounge, accessible to the ballroom through a set of doors, will serve many purposes, Lonergan said. It will increase the venue’s capacity enough that it will be able to host 200- to 300-person events, and it will allow couples who want to host separate pre-wedding cocktail hours a place to do that.

It also will be able to accommodate smaller groups who don’t need or want to pay for the massive ballroom — people throwing showers or graduation parties or businesses wanting to put on smaller corporate functions.

The owners also have other plans for the space that will allow people not invited to private functions at Odd Fellow Hall a chance to enjoy it. In-house chef Bill Crites is planning to start offering smaller, more intimate versions of the big Chef’s Dinners the venue has been putting on, and the staff also will start offering culinary and mixology classes as well as wine tastings in the lounge.

And starting soon, Rebekah’s Lounge will be open to the public on nights when the hall is not booked, and people will be able to stop in to drink wine and spin their own vinyl or enjoy singer/songwriter open mic nights. Lonergan said he’ll start this month with a few trial runs, and people can find out when they’ll be by following the Odd Fellow Hall website and social media channels.

“Most of the nights this fall will be during the week, and we hope they’ll give people something to look forward to on weeknights,” Lonergan said.

The venue’s owners also are working on getting the windows functioning to make Rebekah’s Lounge an open-air space when the weather is nice, and plans have been drawn up to add a balcony as well.

Reservations will be required for dinners at the new lounge, but when it’s open for wine and music, people can just walk in.