Between the blocks of Welch Avenue and Hayward Avenue, a passerby’s attention may be diverted to a small, red building with a 9-foot Christmas tree punctually displayed in its window. A rustic sign above the door reads, “The District,” and inside is home to a relatively new bar in Campustown.

The District opened for business Jan. 15 for its first-ever mug night. Brandon Fick bought the bar last October, and the construction process lasted three or four months. The District replaced what used to be Charlie Yoke’s.

The District recently started featuring mugs of their own. The mug costs $5 to purchase and comes with a permanent discount: $4 Long Islands on Thursdays, as long as the mug isn’t lost or stolen.

Inside, the atmosphere is quite unlike what some bargoers have come to expect. The familiar aspects of the bar scene are unaccompanied by the unwelcoming stench of yesterday’s beer, something The District lacks. In fact, the bar is surprisingly clean.

That’s exactly what Brandon Fick, bar owner, expects.

“It sounds like such a small thing, but realistically, when you walk inside [a bar] and it’s dirty, or beat-up, or poorly planned, it takes away from the experience,” he said.

But it’s cleanliness isn’t the only thing that’s setting The District apart from the other bars in the area.

“There’s obviously a different aesthetic to this bar than there is to any other type of bar,” said Devon Jefferson, junior in journalism and communication.

The bar features three supervisors: Brandon Fick as the owner; his cousin Josh Fick as manager and Shane Hennessey, the bar manager. The dynamic among all of them is laid back and supportive. Josh Fick said he and Hennessey, senior in marketing, handle different aspects of managing The District as a team, and have a mutual ability to learn from one another.

“We care,” Josh Fick said. “We care about the little things here. That goes for every single aspect — every piece of wood, every single pint glass — in this bar.”

He said there are days he could spend a couple hours just doing these “little things” such as using Pledge to clean the bar.

The District serves in 16-ounce pints, as opposed to most bars that serve drinks in 10- to 12-ounce plastic cups, Brandon Fick said. Aside from that, both Brandon and Josh Fick agreed their prices compare to pretty much anywhere else in Ames.

“We had higher prices for a while, people noticed the higher prices, not the bigger drink,” Brandon Fick said. “Now our prices are very comparable — if not identical — to most places.”

The bar currently has Budweiser tap beers. They’re one of two bars in Iowa that serves Natty Light on tap; they have to special order it. The District also serves Exile beer on tap, which is brewed locally in Des Moines.

Josh Fick said they have one of the better liquor collections in town, featuring a lot of top-shelf, premium-quality drinks. The manager gestured to dark, wooden shelves that held $100 to $200 bottles of liquor. They also have a popcorn machine.

The District has a couple of upcoming things on its radar. The biggest, perhaps, is a pedestrian mall that’s in the process of being established behind The District and Mickey’s. The mall could feature things such as food carts.

The team is also working on developing either a kitchen or club. One thing is for certain, the team has a lot of vision for the bar.

“There’s so much room for growth. Every day can yield a new idea for anything,” Josh Fick said. “That’s why it’s so much fun working here. There truly is endless possibilites.”

Before opening The District, Brandon Fick worked a variety of jobs. He dabbled in things like construction, positions within large and small businesses and worked at Es Tas on Stanton Avenue.

He said he’s wanted to have his own business for a long time, but didn’t necessarily picture it being a bar. The bar aspect happened to present itself as an opportunity.

“It just happened, it wasn’t a planned thing. I managed a bar that was in this location for a while [Charlie Yoke’s],” Brandon Fick said, adding things didn’t work out for that bar. When the owner decided to sell it, he offered to buy it.

Brandon Fick originates from Muscatine, Iowa, but moved to Peoria, Ill., before returning to Iowa five or six years ago. He enjoys work and cars, and admits running his business absorbs most of his time.

The owner’s favorite drink on the menu may come as a bit of a shock.

“To be honest, I drink the worst of the worst,” Brandon Fick said, “I drink, well, white rum and coke because before I owned this, I never had enough money to drink anything besides that.”

Although Brandon Fick enjoys the simple pleasures of being a business owner — such as being his own boss and making his own hours — he said the real satisfaction comes from making improvements and fixing problems the way he sees best, rather than being frustrated by what could be done better.

Admitting he’s a bit of a perfectionist, Brandon Fick said people frequently comment that his perfectionism — almost obsessive-compulsive disorder — shows in his work and in the bar.

“You’ve got to know how to deal with Brandon’s perfectionism,” Hennessey said. Later, he added in a humorous tone that it took him about a month and a half to learn precisely how the lights and the music are supposed to be.

Hennessey described a playlist of songs frequently played at the bar, including classic anthems for millennials such as “Sugar We’re Goin Down” by Fall Out Boy, “Mr. Brightside” by The Killers, “What’s My Age Again” by Blink-182 and “Pour Some Sugar on Me” by Def Leppard.

Although the DJ booth is still in the works, customers can make music requests on a TouchTunes jukebox mounted on one of the bar’s walls. There’s also been consideration of changing the upstairs into a more adaptable location for live music.

The owner said the hardest part of the whole process was construction, which involved a small crew of three people working for three months. The crew spent multiple nights sleeping at the bar in booths they built.

“There was no point in going home. It was already [4 a.m.], we were going to start again at [7 a.m.],” he said.

When setting up, Brandon Fick said the establishment’s aesthetic was largely inspired by bars in Chicago. When living in Peoria, the owner lived a relatively short two-hour drive from the city.

He said The District has the same shape as any bar packed on a city block in Chicago; they’re very deep, skinny and have interesting features such as garage doors opening up the back. The garage door concept has been adapted by the The District to give its customers a similar experience. Brandon Fick said the concept is Old Chicago, but rebuilt, redone and new.

“The physical thing that I like most about The District is the back deck,” Jefferson said, “It’s a cool spot, especially when it’s warm. It was just a cool vibe — you could chill out there all night. It’s beautiful.”

Brandon Fick said many things during renovation were accidental such as the exposed brick wall on the western side of the bar. During the construction process, multiple layers of “cover-up” walls were ripped down out of simple curiosity. The different layers varied from brick wallpaper and black plaster to metal. A simple brick wall — the one exposed in the bar now — was the layer underneath it all.

The managers around for the construction process can recall the amount of dedication that went into The District from day one.

“I came in here one time, there was one brick showing, and it took them 30 minutes to polish it,” Hennessey said, reflecting on the tedious process.

Brandon Fick said they were very “scatter-brained” during construction, but the place reveals nothing but a composed environment.

The venue is decorated with an assortment of collectable knick-knacks, metal beers logos, old road signs and hanging light fixtures. In the back of the bar, six original ISU football programs are neatly hung in a bunch. Josh Fick said they collected the vintage publications off eBay, and they date back 50 to 60 years, including one from 1930.

The bar features other treasures such as multiple original Guinness signs they found online. Also mounted on the wall are small metal signs, the size of a modern-day bumper sticker, that read, “Hoover for President” and “Repeal the 18th Amendment.” The signs are originals from the 1930s and 40s and would’ve been attached under a car’s license plate back in those times.

The bar features other interesting decorations. Laughing, Josh Fick pointed out to Brandon Fick that someone slipped a small photograph of Jesus into the edge of a framed Jack Trice picture hung on the wall. “I’m fine with that,” the owner said.

There’s a unanimous decision among the team that establishing the bar has been a process, but something they’ve had fun perfecting.

“Part of the process is the learning as you go — sure I would change a lot of things — but you have to learn from your mistakes in big projects like this,” Brandon Fick said.

The District currently has about 20 employees. Josh Fick said employees can feed off the owner’s energy and passion. He said all of the employees keep things running the way Brandon Fick wants them — not out of fear — but out of wanting things to be right.

“You know what I think is kind of dope here? This has been homebase, and it still is homebase, at least for me,” Jefferson said. “We have a squad that comes here. As well as I think that there’s a squad that works here.” 

Hennessey and Josh Fick have been working at the bar together since The District opened last year.

Josh Fick moved from Muscatine, Iowa, where he and Brandon Fick were both raised, to work at the bar.

Previously, Josh Fick has worked in private security and as a correctional officer. He has a degree in law enforcement, and said the bar has been a necessary change of scene.

“It’s just fun,” he said. “For the first time in my life, I can go to work, I can enjoy myself because I know that people are enjoying themselves. For once, I’m in an atmosphere where people are happy.”

The employees come to another mutual agreement: they enjoy their work and the people they work with.

“The most enjoyable part is coming in at 9 or 10 [p.m.] and this place being at capacity, everyone singing along to whatever song is playing, dancing and having a good time,” Brandon Fick said.

On a wooden shelf behind the bar sits a $250 bottle of Blue Label Johnnie Walker blended scotch whiskey, one of the only remaining bottles of liquor from the bar’s opening almost a year ago.