The Wilmington businessman who owned Charley Brownz before he had to close the business in October, opened a new bar recently on Front Street.

Growlers Tavern, on the bottom floor of the building at 21 N. Front St. that houses City Stage and Level 5, began welcoming customers Dec. 4.

“In a month, we closed a business and opened a business,” said Billy Batten, who shut down Charley Brownz, also a bar, on Oct. 31. He set to work redecorating his new establishment about a week later.

Batten is leasing the 3,500-square-foot space, formerly home to a different bar called The Underground, for an undisclosed amount. Cody Cress and Tyler Pegg, brokers with The CRESS Group of Coldwell Banker Commercial Sun Coast Partners, represented property owner RS2 Enterprises LLC in the transaction, and Paul Loukas, vice president of Cape Fear Commercial, represented Batten.

The name that Batten chose for his new business is a nod to the rapidly growing craft beer industry. A growler is a container that holds beer, and Batten had brown glass growlers made with the new bar’s logo printed on them.

Growlers Tavern currently has 12 craft beers on tap, eight of them from small breweries in North Carolina but outside of Wilmington. “Once I get going, I want to pick up the local guys around here,” Batten said of the craft beer businesses sprouting up downtown and elsewhere in the Port City.

Growlers Tavern, which is entered via a stairway in the alley next to 21 N. Front St., also serves liquor and wine.

Although he didn’t make any structural changes to it, Batten said he worked to open up the space, removing doors from interior doorways, for example, and uncovering a window to some of the building’s inner workings. The window frames hardware that operates the building’s sprinkler system, and after Batten hung a red light over it, patrons were fascinated. “They sit here and try to figure it out, and they take pictures of it,” he said.

Batten did much of the painting and woodwork, repurposing some of his furnishings from Charley Brownz to make long narrow tables topped with 100-year-old pine rafters that used to be part of an old downtown drug store. He commissioned the bar's wooden stools from a local carpenter.

Referring to the woodwork, exposed brick and “nooks and crannies” of his new place, Batten said, “Locals love stuff like this…I think it encompasses what downtown is.”

Right now, Growlers Tavern is open 7 p.m. to 2 a.m. Tuesday through Saturday, but Batten said he plans to increase those hours eventually to seven days with an opening time of 5 p.m. He has three employees, who also used to work at Charley Brownz, and plans to hire more.

Batten said he closed Charley Brownz on Halloween night, the same date The Underground closed, because the landlord did not want to renew the bar’s lease. The building where Charley Brownz operated beginning in 1997, at 21 S. Front St., will contain the 11,000-square-foot headquarters of Next Glass, a Wilmington-based firm that has developed an app to create personalized beer and wine recommendations for users.