When Rough Draft opened in November 2017, I remember thinking, “Books…and beer!? Puns…and coffee!?! It’s my actual dream.” Mine and apparently everyone else’s too. In the near decade since opening, Rough Draft Bar & Books has become an essential node of Uptown Kingston—a community gathering place for everything from book clubs to run clubs, divorced dads commiserating over a beer to D&D nerds planning a campaign and just-minted college grads window-shopping bestsellers.
The bar/bookstore took over a 400-year-old corner of the Stockade District and breathed new life into it’s postcard historic stone facade and beautiful, busted bluestone sidewalks. And now, it’s time to move shop. Yes, the rumors are true, in 2027, Rough Draft is moving to the Senate Garage.
With a year and a half left on the lease at 82 John Street, Rough Draft owners Amanda and Anthony Stromoski started looking for other spaces due to various issues with the building. “We were trying to work with the landlord, but it really didn’t seem like a lot of those issues were going to be resolved between now and the end of our lease,” Anthony says. “We tried really hard—we inquired about occupying the second floor, doing building repairs ourselves, purchasing the building. But none of those things were in the cards, so we had our minds open and eyes open for other opportunities.”
While moving is never ideal for an established neighborhood business, moving 2.5 blocks away to another historic stone building is about the best scenario they could’ve hope for. “We had outgrown our space so we didn’t want to go anywhere smaller. We wanted it to be historic, we wanted it to be beautiful, we wanted it to be Uptown,” Amanda says. “The Senate Garage ticked all those things and just fell into our laps. This is the best and natural next evolution of Rough Draft.”
It’s a big evolution. The ground-floor Senate Garage space, which will continue to be rented for weddings and private events through the end of 2026, is a whopping 8,500 square feet. Rough Draft renovations will start with their lease in January 2027. “Our goal is to be open in March,” Anthony says. “We’ve also done this enough to know that there will be a lot of surprises. But we going to be as efficient as possible.” There is already an onsite kitchen, so the main technical buildout will be installing the bar as well as plumbing for tap lines and espresso, then furnishing the massive space.
“All our stuff from here—bookshelves, tables, and couches—will fill up a third to half of space, so we’re going to build more bookshelves and get more furniture,” Amanda says with a laugh. “The space is already so beautiful and has such wonderful details already, we’re hoping to not change that much about the actual character of space, just figure out how we can put our own touches on things.” In addition to the much-needed additional seating, the new Rough Draft location will have more food, more drinks, more books, and more events.
“We don’t anticipate wildly expanded hours but maybe staying open a little later on more nights to have more music, more book and author events, and keep doing trivia,” Anthony says. “We have an open mind and the space to say yes to a lot more stuff.”
“When we bough the building in 2016, Kingston was a very different place with very little tourism and no baby carriages. We saw an opportunity to uplift the town while creating a business that was exciting to us,” says Judy Tallerman, who co-owns the Senate Garage building and event business, as well as CoWork Kingston with her husband, Don. “We felt that the Rough Draft owners aligned with our community vision and values. We are huge fans of Kingston and we all live here and work here. We like that the space will be open to the public seven days a week.”
Starting in 2027 after their final events have wrapped, the Tallermans will focus full time on CoWork Kingston, which will continue to occupy upstairs. Rhino Records, which has an independent entrance on North Front Street, will also continue to operate out of the building, offering a nice complement to the ground-floor coffee shop/bar. “We believe the combination of Rough Draft and CoWork Kingston will allow the building to be a vibrant and inclusive heart for the community in the Hudson Valley,” Tallerman says.
And with the bordering Senate House State Historic Site, people can also order coffee to go and walk around a beautiful state park. (Rough Draft even has the potential to rent the park space from the Senate House for future outdoor events like a book fair or a reading.)
“Having just recently moved Kingston Bread + Bar from Uptown to Midtown, we know there are both pros and cons to changing neighborhoods,” Amanda says. “But we live in Uptown and Rough Draft was our first thing here in Kingston. To us, it really feels like an Uptown spot. We have so many regulars that walk here, so it’s nice to know they’ll still be able to do that.”
For the rest of the year, service will continue as usual at 82 John Street. “Our goal is really to take all the best things we love about that space and building and the people and take it over to the Senate Garage with us and just do more,” Anthony says. ”We wanted to be here for another 20 years or more, and this this is the move that is going to let us do that.”
