Cochrane Enterprise: Provider of some not-so Scholastic Campus Recreation

by: Ryan Simutis [simutis1@illinois.edu]

The Agency: The University of Illinois has numerous and wide-ranging forms of campus recreation options. Students can attend an aerobics class at the ARC on a Thursday afternoon, go home and shower, then meet up with their friends and go on a bar-crawl later that evening. The ability of students to partake in the last-mentioned activity is the business of the recreation sponsoring organization I will be discussing; Cochrane Enterprise (office building in Urbana pictured above).

Background: Cochrane Enterprise, started up by his father, is currently owned and managed by "the Bar Baron of Champaign", Scott Cochrane (pictured left wearing blue, along with his VP of Operations, Robin Cook, at Firehaus). Cochrane Enterprise provides Illinois students with arguably the most popular form of recreation not provided by the University itself, the bar-scene. The student body doesn't represent this agency's only customers as Cochrane owned bars are also frequented by residents of Champaign as well as Illinois alumni who visit the various bars they may have once been loyal customers of in their own college days. The bars currently operating under Cochrane Enterprise are Firehaus, the Clybourne, Station-211, and FuBar. All of these bars have their own varying provisions (you could get lunch or dinner at Firehaus, see a live band at Station, etc.), but they all provide the same bottom-line recreation expected of campus bars: a place to go out with your friends, watch the game, drink, dance, and/or whatever one desires to do that night. The bars can also be rented out for private parties, which is very popular among the extremely strong and present Greek system at U of I.

Employment: At the bars, there are gender-dependent entry level positions (doorman/barback or shotgirl) with a few paths available as far as promotions go such as "Headdoorman", bartender, promoter, and more. I myself am actually an employee of this agency, working at Station-211 (interior view pictured above). To inquire about employment, I interviewed one of my co-workers, a student-manager names Scott Schaper. I asked how exactly one goes about getting a job with the agency and he said "honestly, it's very political. It's all about who you know, because the fact is, any time a spot opens, a hundred kids are going to apply for a campus bar-job. No one [manager] is going to take the time to go through 100 apps, they're just going to hook-up the kid(s) in their [fraternity or sorority] house." Prime example provided by this very interview occurring; I am actually in the same house as Scott and last Spring he asked if I wanted a job, and despite the 30 or so applicants, I got it just like that. While employment at any of Cochrane's bars technically makes you an employee of the agency, there are positions available to those older than college students in the agency itself, not just a particular bar. These positions include event planner, bar G.M., and numerous office and executive positions. To obtain one of these higher-up spots, Scott told me you would either need to have a solid business resume or be a graduate that spent his or her college time rising through the ranks at one of the Cochrane owned bars.

Recent Trends: I recently took a daytime trip to FuBar to talk to one of Cochrane's G.M.'s, Steve Love, to ask how the agency picks-up on and deals with modern trends. He told me that because the bars' main customers are the age-demographic that initiates popular modern trends, the bars need to constantly update to stay cool and current. "No kids want to come take rounds of shots and dance to Bruce Springsteen ya know? Your ideal Friday night party isn't going to match up perfectly with your father's or uncle's or whoever went here in the '80's. Obviously, it's not just as simple as updating the music, but the general idea is kids change anything and everything they like as time goes on", Steve said. I can definitely see how the bars have been addressing certain new trends. For example, the whole club-dance scene is really popular lately, so the campus bars have made the transition from just playing music to having full-on DJ sets on the busier nights. Another trend, not so financially beneficial for the agency, is that the Champaign police have started to increase the frequency of their raids on the bars to check ID's. Under-age drinking is a major issue at the campus bars because of the 19-year-old bar-entry age in Champaign. Although I'm sure no one in the agency would care to admit it, illegal under-age drinking probably provides about third of the bars' revenue. This increased police presence has made many bar-goers wary of being customers. Also, substantial fines are imposed on the bar itself when a certain amount of tickets are written at the establishment in a night. Scott Cochrane himself actualluy stated (at a large-scale staff meeting earlier this September) that Firehaus was the only bar that turned a profit this past year.

Definition of Leisure: I feel that the agency Cochrane Enterprise and all of its operations on this campus most closely follow the 'surplus-energy' theory of leisure in that they provide somewhere for students, after a long week of stressful schoolwork and studying, a place to go and unwind, a place to maybe burn some energy on the dance floor, to socialize, and most importantly, to just enjoy themselves and have a good time. The agency's operation falls under all 3 categories we've focused on: recreation, leisure, and play. I would certainly call going to the campus bars play, as it is anyone's motivation for going there to socialize and have a good time dancing or just getting around. Going to the bars would certainly fall under leisure as it is a way that many choose to spend a portion of their time not connected to school/work. Because recreation can be defined as a fusion of leisure and play, the agency's services definitely qualify as a form of campus recreation. I asked a Cochrane Enterprise bartender and good friend of mine (who is actually an RST major) to help me come up with a definition of leisure for the agency: bottom-line, when its possible to fit into their busy schedules, students go to the bars to unwind and have a good time.

Campus Mainstay: Despite the recent economic hard times, there is no doubt in my mind that Cochrane Enterprise will survive. The agency is always ready to cater to its major supporters, the student body, in whatever way modern time dictates. Kids come to college and get their first taste of true independence; there's no mom and dad to set curfew and limitations on what they can do. While of course not every student chooses to party and go out and things like that, enough do to keep things the way they are. Being able to go to the bars is the first form of leisure available to kids that most likely had not been an option previous to leaving for college.




Synopsis: This agency, Cochrane Enterprise, certainly fits into the leisure delivery system. Using the services provided by this agency can be defined as play, as recreation, and absolutely as a form of leisure. For me, this experience began last Spring when I started working at one of the agency's bars. However, it was very interesting for me to take an investigative and inquisitive approach towards learning about the agency from the standpoint that it is a commercial leisure providing business. As far as career paths go, some cons would be that perhaps the agency business has a negative connotation as well as the fact that you'd really need to work your way up to make a career, not just a college job. The most tangible pros are numerous; countless hook-ups when I am on the customer side of it all, excellent social exposure and networking, as well as a pretty solid paying job for a student. In a grander sense, I'm dedicating my time and effort to facilitate the operation of an establishment that brings so much happiness to thousands of students. After a long, difficult, and stressful week, some kids might just want to cut loose and have an awesome night out. Cochrane Enterprise operates so that those kids have another option for where and how to do that.

Works Cited:

"The Bar Baron of Champaign County" www.The217.com. Spetember 29th, 2008.

Interviews/Quoting: Scott Schaper, Steve Love, Scott Cochrane