Downtown Sporting Club is unlike anything else on Lower Broadway. Here’s why. – The Tennessean
Benjamin and Max Goldberg closed Paradise Park when sales were booming.
The Lower Broadway honky-tonk was on track to have one of its best years yet, but the Goldberg brothers, in an arguably risky move, decided to shut the first-floor bar and pursue an ambitious overhaul of the entire four-story building at 411 Broadway.
Their goal? To open the kind of place where they would want to hang out.
The only remnants of Paradise Park you’ll find in the nearly 43,000-square-foot building, which is now surprisingly polished, are on the second-floor in “The R.E.C. Room,” where people can lounge in lawn chairs on a small patch of turf and watch marquee sporting events on a 14-foot projector screen. But everything else in the high-profile building has been completely transformed in the nine months since the honky-tonk closed.
Downtown Sporting Club, which will debut Thursday just in time for the NFL Draft, is unlike anything else on Lower Broadway. Most notably, there’s no live music. That’s a bold move on a street packed with honky-tonk after honky-tonk, where country music fills the air from morning to night.
“We closed Paradise Park down and it was having one of its most successful financial years it ever had,” Benjamin Goldberg said. “We did it not because we didn’t love Paradise Park, but because we felt like this fit within the fabric of downtown so nicely because it is so different than what’s happening down here. Max likes to say, ‘We were zigging when everyone else was zagging.’”
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If you look at the brothers’ Strategic Hospitality portfolio, they are indeed trailblazers in Nashville’s hospitality scene. They got in early on the craft cocktail trend with The Patterson House, The Catbird Seat is one of the most innovative and high-end restaurants in town, The Band Box at First Tennessee Park offers a higher quality take on stadium dining, and Pinewood Social brought coffee, cocktails, bowling and lounging pools together under one roof.
The Goldbergs for years toyed with the Downtown Sporting Club concept. They were able to move forward after partnering with a group of investors last year to purchase the Broadway building for $27 million. The Goldbergs worked with Nashville architect Manuel Zeitlin on the project.
“One of the biggest reasons we wanted to do this project was to preserve local ownership on Lower Broadway,” Max Goldberg said. “We love everything that’s happening around us, but we really wanted to make sure some local folks could own and operate something on Lower Broadway, which we think is the heartbeat of downtown.”
It is refreshing to see a unique concept as Lower Broadway overcrowds with celebrity-branded honky-tonks. There’s clearly a place for those, too — tourists flock to the street for live music and bar owners are raking in money at unprecedented levels.
But the Goldbergs hope Downtown Sporting Club appeals to locals and tourists. With the motto “From rise till rest,” the venue will be active around the clock.
“If you’re coming downtown, we want to create that space for local people to feel comfortable and not have to go to a honky-tonk that might be busier or more of a party environment than what they’re looking for,” Benjamin Goldberg said.
The building is separated into unique spaces, each with a different theme and feel, including Carter Assembly, The Ribbon Room, The R.E.C. Room, the Guest Rooms and the Rooftop Bar at Downtown Sporting Club. The spaces were named after Richard E. Carter, who constructed the building in 1949, according to Strategic Hospitality.
The first floor houses a cafe by day (with a Crema coffee bar) and a bar by night; a chef-driven restaurant open for brunch, lunch and dinner; a private dining area; and a few games.
Chef Amy Deaderick will oversee the food program in the entire building.
The second floor is a game room/sports bar with a big bar overlooking Lower Broadway; large group tables with their own TV; a 14-foot projector screen; games including Foosball and shuffleboard; and a private “living room” space for up to 20 people. The second floor will serve elevated bar food.
Also located on the second floor are 12 ax throwing lanes, which is the latest trend in group entertainment. People can make reservations online — it costs $20 per person for one hour of play and 15 minutes of instruction — and each lane will have a guide to teach people how to throw and ensure guests’ safety.
The building’s third-floor has 20 guest rooms, including four rooms with floor to ceiling windows overlooking Lower Broadway. The Goldbergs created the sound-proof rooms (I tested this claim during the chaos leading up to the NFL Draft and couldn’t hear any Lower Broadway activity) with their friends in mind.
“We get asked all the time from people we know, ‘Where should we stay?’ We wanted to create a space where we felt good about telling them to stay with us at a pricepoint we would not shy away from, ever,” Benjamin Goldberg said.
Room rates will start at $179 a night, with rooms overlooking Broadway starting at $259 per night. There are rooms with bunk beds for less than $100 per person per night.
The fourth floor is a lush garden and rooftop bar with lots of greenery and outdoor games.
All told, the venue is a far cry from the beer-soaked floors and kitschy décor at Paradise Park, but it’s a reflection of where the Goldbergs are at this stage in their life. The building at 411 Broadway is where the brothers first started their journey as business partners, a relationship that has grown to include 10 venues over the last 12 years.
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“We have to just be true to ourselves and say, ‘What would we want?’ The easiest thing to do would have been to open a really cool honky-tonk because they are crushing it, but Benjamin and I aren’t doing things for a year, two years, three years. We want to be here for 20, 30 years and really have this place feel timeless,” Max Goldberg said.
Reach Lizzy Alfs at lalfs@tennessean.com or 615-726-5948 and on Twitter @lizzyalfs.
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Published 4:32 PM EDT Apr 25, 2019
