On a quiet week, 60 hours.
That’s one estimate of the time Conor Hawkins spends at the five-star Curtiss Hotel, the Banshee pub and the Sky Bar in Buffalo, N.Y.
“If nothing goes wrong,” he said, by way of qualification. In any case, he added, “it’s a 24-7 operation.”
And so, when Hawkins is having a “quiet pint” in the Banshee, of which he is co-owner, watching GAA or soccer or rugby on his day off, he’s available to take questions, often lots of them, from staff and customers.
The Banshee, or more precisely, 257 Franklin St., is his first love. He’s been working there since arriving in the United States from Belfast 24 years ago. It was then called D’Arcy McGee’s.
It’s was where he learned to put the head down and work. “A lot of people bounce around in jobs in America,” he said. Hawkins, though, believes in making your own luck where you are. And early on, the man who’d trained and worked as a chef for close to a decade back home made it clear to D’Arcy McGee’s owner Mark Croce that he was interested in taking on managerial responsibilities.
The pair forged a close working relationship over a period of almost two decades. They were in email contact on Jan. 9, 2020, just minutes before Croce began the short helicopter journey in Washington DC that ended his life. His passenger, a friend, was also killed. The businessman left behind a wife, Jessica, and two sons.
Through their shock and grief, family members and close associates had to consider the future of Croce’s various businesses and properties. One plan for D’Arcy McGees as Covid eased was to lease out the space. “Flatten everything,” Hawkins recalled of the details, “including the fireplaces and including the bar that came from Ireland with a snug.”
But the Belfast man and three partners had an alternative idea, which was to turn what had been a fairly generic place — a regular downtown bar — into something more obviously Irish.
“Listen, what do we want in a pub?” said Hawkins, recalling the starting point in their discussion. The collective answer could be summarized as, “Good Irish food, good Irish music, Irish sports, a place where we can go and relax and have a good time and enjoy ourselves.”
The Banshee was born and Hawkins would work also as manager of the Curtiss, maintaining the standards of opulence and the range of amenities and facilities befitting its five-star status, and also at the summertime Sky Bar club, which is atop 257 Franklin.
Buffalo, a famous American city close to Niagara Falls on the border with Canada, has much else besides, which one can detect just sitting in the Banshee, as it’s a favorite for the people who go to Shea’s Performing Arts Center, aka Shea’s Buffalo Theater.
“It’s a very cultural city, and it’s a very social city,” Hawkins said of Buffalo.
Up there with the arts and the social life, he argued for the region’s “four full seasons.”
He said, “Yes, the winters can be harsh, but the summers are great – there are lots of activities, the lakes. Niagara Falls, GAA, the beaches.
“It’s very easy going, the cost of living is low compared with other places. There’s not too much rush-hour traffic,” he added about a city he described as smaller than Belfast and a lot smaller than Boston.
It’s convenient, too, for trips to the cities of the East Coast and to other places he likes such as Pittsburgh and Cleveland.
For the first couple of months after arriving in May 2001, Hawkins thought, “What am I doing here? I don’t know if this is for me.”
“Gaelic football probably helped, getting away from everyday life,” he recalled.
He’s still close to fellow immigrants, and two of his three business partners are the Dubliners Neil Coogan and Kevin Dorgan.
“The best nights in here are with expats having the craic,” the Banshee’s co-owner said.
Hawkins flew home on Sept. 8, 2001, for a scheduled visa interview in King’s Street, Belfast, on Sept. 10. An appointment a couple of days later might have complicated his situation, but he returned to the U.S. as soon as it was possible to fly.
His career began in earnest. But it wasn’t mainly as a chef, the position for which he’d interviewed and had almost a decade of experience, with his start in the Lansdowne Court Hotel and his long time in the Terrace restaurant. Croce, instead, wanted “an Irish lad out in the front of the house” talking to the customers.
After a while he slowed down so they could understand him, and they had him explain terms like “what’s the craic?” The comprehension deficit sometimes went the other way, too.
Meanwhile, Hawkins could also train other staff how to cook. He likes being back in the kitchen, though, “where it all started,” and when they are a person down, as inevitably happens, “I put on my whites.”
Hawkins usually oversaw several of the Croce properties at a given time. “Mark took over the Statler in 2010,” he said of one of them, a 950,000 square-foot hotel that was completed in 1923, and in recent years was sold on to a local developer. “A lovely building, with a lot of rich history,” Hawkins added.
There was the Buckin’ Buffalo, a country-themed bar and venue for all the city’s important country music events. “It ran a good 15 years,” he said. There was also Loughlin’s, which was an English-style American pub. Through it all, he has worked from his 3rd-floor office at 257 Franklin.
He gets home to Belfast to see his parents three times a year usually, and sometimes four. In 2018, he was honored at the Belfast Ambassador Awards, and Mark and Jessica Croce traveled with him and did a tour of the island of Ireland.
“It was great to have him back there,” Hawkins remembered. “He was an Italian American who loved the Irish bars.”
There isn’t the Irish influx into Buffalo, these days, that he believes is needed. There aren’t any Irish-born players on the GAA team, for example. Now as referee he must deal with young American who react badly to being issued with cards.
“I tell them, ‘Hey! I’ve played this game. I know the rules,’” Hawkins said. (He knows the new rules, too, having done mandated GAA courses on them.)
“I’ve mellowed in my management style,” he said about his job.
But, it’s always been his philosophy to treat those who work for him well.
“The key is having good staff, getting good managers. Be really nice to your staff,” he said. “Don't try to be a jerk. Don’t be, ‘I’m the boss, it’s my way or the highway.’ If you’re trying to get a job done, you do it by asking, not by telling, and then thank them.
“Most of my managers have worked for me a long time,” he said, with the fourth Banshee partner, the American-born James Corda, being top of that list.
At one point, Hawkins thought he might take it easier and step back from the hotel and the nightclub at age 50; but when that most recent birthday came around, he put the plan off for another three years.
He’s long dreamed of finding somewhere to live on the Antrim coast; at other times, however, he believes he’s as likely to stay on in Buffalo.
Whatever course Conor Hawkins chooses and wherever he is, one imagines that he’ll be on standby, ready at a moment’s notice, to put his whites on.
