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At the turn of the twentieth century, the now dilapidated structure on Tampa’s Columbus Drive was called the Sanchez y Haya Building, where Ignacio Haya of prominent cigar makers Flor de Sánchez y Haya built his factory competing with long-time rival Vincente Martinez Ybor who founded his own company town Ybor City nearby around his Principe de Gales cigar factory. Thousands of Cuban tabaqueros followed, making Tampa and Ybor City “Cigar Capital of the World” by 1929 producing 500 million fine cigars from 150 factories at its peak. But the Sanchez y Hoya factory was among the first. Unfortunately, it wasn’t meant to last. After about a decade many of the factories shuddered for good. The Sanchez y Haya building became a hotel, restaurant, speakeasy, and later a bar. But now it is getting a multi-million dollar facelift and a new lease on life.
During the years of prohibition, the factory became El Avance Restaurant, a Cuban eatery by day and well-known speakeasy by night. Records of a prohibition-era raid reveal that authorities seized over 200 gallons of whiskey there! Eventually, after decades of decay the building became The Chip-In Bar in the 1990s but according to TampaBay.com, after reports of shootings and stabbings was again abandoned for decades.
Once again the factory has come into the ownership of a cigar manufacturer the J.C. Newman Cigar Co., who are in the midst of a massive effort to restore the building in order to convert it into a cafe, cigar lounge, and hotel, perhaps even restoring its historic name. However, there’s a small problem… actually thousands of small problems…
The staff of the J.C. Newman’s El Reloj cigar factory across the street has dubbed the building “the bat cave”. per Holden Rasmussen, who runs the factory’s museum and store which was already purchased and lovingly restored by the J.C. Newman Cigar Company in 2002. As he wrote in their blog, “Like every cigar factory in town, the Regensburg had a nickname: El Reloj, Spanish for “The Clock.” For generations, residents had risen and retired to the hourly chimes ringing from its tall brick clock tower. After decades of silence, the landmark El Reloj now rings again”
Its storied bar was the home to bootlegging during Prohibition and of Tampa’s criminal underworld decades ago. In the next few years, we will be working on restoring Sanchez y Haya to its historic grandeur and reopening it as a small inn along with a café & cigar lounge.
— J.C. Newman Cigar Co. (@JCNewmanCigars) November 24, 2021
The Return of the Speakeasy With A Cigar Vibe
Rasmussen has estimated that there could be as many as 10,000 bats in the building but Drew Newman who is general counsel for the company believes the number to be half of that.
Laura Finn who heads up nonprofit Fly By Night who has been charged by the Newmans with clearing the winged creatures from the building told TampaBay.com “We won’t know until we really get in there,” The J.C. Newman company has built bat houses atop 24” tall poles in a neighboring grassy lot they also own to hold 800-1,200 bats after their points of entry to the building are closed off and they are allowed to egress through one-way “exclusion tubes”. This must be completed before the April-August mating season for the bats. The adjoining lot would then become a park where evening strolls could be treated to watching the bats fly off into the evening.
Drew Newman summed it up for the press,
“We envision restoring this 111-year-old building to its historic grandeur — bringing it back to life the way it was when it opened in 1910. But we need to safely relocate the bats before we can begin.”
“We hope to complete the project and open by the end of 2023. Our first priority is protecting our colony of bats. We need to safely relocate the bats to bat houses.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lu0FAiSOT0o&t=2s
