Night spot to reopen with 'new vibe'

A downtown bar that was a popular hangout for university students and other "20-somethings" before it closed more than two years ago is poised to open this week with a new name, new owner and a new vibe.

During a pandemic.

I spent part of Friday afternoon touring Hypnotic, 632 Broadway in Cape Girardeau, and talking with its owner, Sahil Bhardwaj, about the night spot's new look, his plans for ongoing upgrades and the steps he's taking to help keep his patrons safe from COVID-19.

"We'll be doing a couple of different things," the 29-year-old entrepreneur told me, "including touchless thermometers, and we will also have steam sanitizers that will spray everyone from the neck down as they enter."

The 3,500-square-foot nightclub and bar, once known as Last Call, has undergone a complete renovation, from floor to roof and everything in between. It features two sizable bars and a large dance floor surrounded by state-of-the-art sound and lighting systems.

The bar's "vibe" can be described as "urban chic," featuring exposed brick, visible ceiling rafters and mood lighting throughout. It also has a video security system with 32 high-definition 4K cameras keeping an eye on everything in the bar (except the restrooms, of course), inside and out and an ID checking system Sahil says will weed out virtually all "fake" driver's licenses.

"The reason the old bar shut down was for serving minors," he said. "I'm against that; we don't want kids to enter and we'll be doing a lot to prevent it."

Hypnotic's cloud-based ID scanner "will not only tell us someone's age, but it will also tell us if the ID is fake or real with 98% accuracy," Sahil told me. "Not only can it scan American IDs, but it can also scan the IDs from 196 different countries."

Employees, including bar and security staff, have been hired. Hypnotic's initial hours will be 8 p.m. until about 1:30 a.m. daily.

Originally from New Jersey, Sahil says he grew up with a "sense of adventure" that has taken him around the world. "I've probably traveled 70 to 80% of the world. I've seen enough and so many ideas I can apply here."

Although he has "multiple businesses around the state," Sahil says this will be his first venture in the nightclub business. As for where the name "Hypnotic" came from, he laughed and said, "that's a question for my wife. She named it." His wife is a pediatric surgeon in the St. Louis area.

Even as work crews put the finishing touches on Hypnotic's interior, Sahil is working with the city on plans for developing an outside gathering area on the corner of Broadway and Sprigg Street that will include outdoor seating, beverage service and a waterfall feature. He hopes work on the patio area can take place within a few months.

"Once we have the outside seating set up, we can do something like a hookah lounge there," Sahil said. Eventually, depending on how the bar does, he said he may also add a limited food menu at some point.

Local real estate agent Tom Meyer, whose office is less than a block from Hypnotic, worked with Sahil on the building's purchase. Tom told me that according to the building's abstract, one of the first businesses there was Knaup Floral about a century ago.

"Knaup started out here," he said during my meeting with Sahil. "There was also a locksmith on the corner (of Sprigg and Broadway) and next door there was a harness and buggy operation."

How times have changed!

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Phil Penzel's great-great-grandfather built the former Leonard Feed Store on the corner of Main and Missouri streets in Jackson in 1898. Penzel Construction Co. was established 12 years later.Jay Wolz

Speaking of older buildings, I included a photo of one that accompanied a story I wrote about the historical architecture survey that's about to start in Jackson.

Almost as soon as the story appeared here, I heard from Phil Penzel of Penzel Construction Co. who identified the building as what was originally the Leonard Feed Store.

The two-story structure on the corner of Jackson's Main and Missouri streets was built in 1898 by Phil's great-great-grandfather, Gustav, 12 years before Gustav's son (Phil's great-grandfather) started the construction company that today bears the Penzel name.

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In a story last month about a Cape Girardeau County Commission meeting, I included several paragraphs about a free mobile app called PulsePoint. The app can alert Cape Girardeau residents trained in hand-only cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) when someone near them suffers cardiac arrest.

I subsequently received additional information about PulsePoint from Saint Francis Healthcare, which is partnering with Cape Girardeau police and fire departments to launch the app.

The Saint Francis Foundation received a $90,000 grant from the American College of Cardiologists to help bring PulsePoint to Cape Girardeau. The grant helped cover the cost of mapping existing AED's (automated external defibrillators) in Cape Girardeau and will also pay for the purchase of 30 additional AEDs. In addition, the foundation is providing funding for CPR education and ongoing maintenance for the project.

The PulsePoint system is designed to work in conjunction with emergency medical dispatchers to not only alert those with CPR training when someone near them suffers a cardiac arrest, but to also notify them of the closest available AEDs.

There are approximately 85 "out of hospital" cardiac arrests in Cape Girardeau each year, according to Dustin Koerber, Cape Girardeau Fire Department battalion chief.

"PulsePoint is a great tool for alerting users of the app of a nearby incident with the goal of initiating early CPR and use of the AED," he said. "Those actions alone can increase the victim's chances of surviving by nearly 45%."

More information is available at PulsePoint.org.

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