Red Clay Brewing Company was supposed to close in March. The taproom on North Railroad Avenue had been slinging Tres Barbas Mexican Lager and Southern Bumpkin Sweet Potato Brown Ale for eleven years, since a cotton warehouse got turned into a brewhouse and downtown Opelika started looking like somewhere people wanted to spend a Friday night. Then, in January, the announcement came that Red Clay was shutting down.
It didn't. The person who kept it open wasn't a national brand or an out-of-town investor. It was Chris Hutchison, a local beer enthusiast who'd spent two years pulling pints there part time. He bought the place, kept brewmaster Kraig Collins, who's been behind the kettles since day one, and reopened the taproom in March 2026.
"I didn't want to see something else come into this space," Hutchison said. "Red Clay has been a staple in the community and I want to keep that going."
That sentence is doing more work than it looks like. Across town this year, the businesses that almost disappeared didn't get replaced by something unfamiliar. They got bought back by people who already knew the recipe, the regulars, and the reason the place mattered in the first place. Meanwhile, the one genuinely new thing landing in Opelika right now isn't downtown at all. It's out by the interstate, and it's the first of its kind in Alabama.
Same Bar, New Name on the Deed
Hutchison's plans for Red Clay aren't a reinvention. He's adding lounge-style seating and a kid-friendly corner, the kind of tweaks a regular makes to a place he already loves rather than the kind of overhaul a stranger makes to a place he's trying to flip. The taproom's fall calendar reads like it never skipped a beat: a Fall Bash with live music and food trucks, Tuesday trivia hosted by Disco KrisCo and Mike Vee, Wednesday and Saturday specials on beer and pizza, and Saturday gameday watch parties running through college football season.
If you'd walked away from Opelika in December and walked back in September, you'd find the same building, the same brewmaster, and mostly the same crowd. What changed was who's signing the lease. That's a different kind of story than "new restaurant opens," and it's the one actually happening on Railroad Avenue.
Wild Wing Comes Home to Familiar Faces
Across town, Wild Wing Cafe went through something similar. The restaurant had closed under previous ownership, and in March, new operators Jeroskie Finch and Karanja Story reopened it under new management. What makes their reopening notable isn't the menu, it's who's working the floor. Finch and Story have been hiring back former employees, people who already knew the rhythm of a Friday shift there.
"It means a lot, everybody's excited," Finch said. "A lot of the new employees are former employees, they were here before. Wild Wing is like a family."
Their plans lean into that continuity. They've reached out to nearby high schools and coaches to build relationships with local teams, and they're planning a kids-eat-free night aimed at bringing families back in. The ribbon cutting got pushed back from its original date over some last-minute adjustments, but the intent hasn't changed: rebuild something that already existed, with the people who already knew how to run it.
Two businesses, two near-misses, two comebacks led by insiders rather than outsiders. That's not a coincidence specific to breweries and wing joints. It's what a downtown looks like when the people who work there think the buildings are worth saving.
Meanwhile, Out by the Interstate
Contrast that with what's happening near Tiger Town, off I-85 and Highway 280 by The Landings Development. In December 2025, Chasing Aces broke ground on its first Alabama location, a golf and entertainment venue going in near Texas Roadhouse. Nothing about this one is a reopening. It's brand new money, arriving from outside, betting on a concept nobody downtown has tried.
The venue will include a driving range powered by InRange technology that tracks shot data in real time, a social putting course built for casual competition rather than serious golf, a par-3 short course, and Home Run Dugout batting simulation bays for baseball and softball. CEO John Dudley described the pitch plainly: "Chasing Aces is built for today's players, families, friends, and groups who want to connect, compete, and enjoy golf in a way that's approachable, social, and full of energy." Opelika Mayor Eddie Smith and Economic Development Director John Sweatman both spoke at the groundbreaking, and both talked about it in terms of jobs and visitors from across the region rather than the kind of neighborhood loyalty that saved Red Clay and Wild Wing.
Construction is underway now, with an opening targeted for the first quarter of 2027. If you drive past The Landings this fall, you're watching Opelika's other kind of growth take shape, the kind that doesn't have a bartender's name already attached to it.
Two Different Kinds of Growth, Happening at Once
Put those three stories side by side and a pattern shows up that a single headline wouldn't catch. Downtown, where the buildings are old and the relationships are older, the businesses that struggled got saved by people already inside them. Out at the highway interchange, where there's room to build something from scratch, the growth is coming from a company that's never operated in Alabama before. Both things are true about Opelika right now, and neither one is the whole story on its own.
If you've lived here a while, you probably already sensed some version of this. The brewery you worried about is still your brewery. The wing place you used to hit after a game is back, with the same people behind the counter who remembered your order. And there's a golf facility going up by the interstate that nobody's family has history with yet, because nobody's family has had the chance.
That's worth knowing before you decide what to believe about how a small Alabama city grows. It's not always outsiders coming in. Sometimes it's insiders refusing to let something go, and right now in Opelika, both are happening on opposite ends of town at the same time.
If you're already living here, go say hello to Chris Hutchison at Red Clay some Tuesday during trivia, or catch Jeroskie Finch and Karanja Story's team at Wild Wing on a Friday night. The people at The Nest Collective live in this town too, and we like knowing who's actually behind the counter as much as you do.
