Township Fort Lauderdale — the half-German beer corridor, half-neighborhood pub the place tribes of sports activities followers got here for camaraderie, craft beer and Tremendous Bowl events — abruptly closed on Could 12 after 4 years within the downtown space.
Tim Petrillo, cofounder of The Restaurant Individuals (S3, YOLO, Java & Jam), wasted little time or fanfare shutting the doorways to Township: He locked up the bar and took down Township’s web site and social accounts a couple of hours after promoting the lease to Tin Roof, a Nashville-based, barbecue-and-live-music chain that's anticipated to reopen in that house later this fall.
“We made cash on it. It was an excellent deal for us,” Petrillo instructed the South Florida Solar Sentinel on Friday morning, though he declined to reveal the acquisition worth. “We’re not unhappy that we closed this retailer. They provided us quantity, and it was good for either side.”
The sports activities pub at 219 S. Andrews Ave., throughout the historic McCrory Constructing, took up an enviable perch downtown: subsequent to The Wharf Fort Lauderdale, Las Olas Boulevard and a sprawl of recent residential towers. When it debuted in 2018, Township’s menu leaned on German-style bratwursts and pretzels but in addition served burgers and fish sandwiches that evoked the consolation fare at Petrillo’s bygone eatery Tarpon Bend.
The bar additionally served as a college-football hub, particularly for Florida State Seminole acolytes, Petrillo says. However as faculty crowds left downtown and younger professionals shuffled into close by high-rises, the character of the neighborhood gentrified and foot visitors dried up, Petrillo explains.
“It’s powerful to run a college-town enterprise in a extra upscale downtown,” says Petrillo, who has owned the constructing with real-estate investor Steven Halmos since 1998. “It’s nice to be a sports activities bar, nevertheless it’s additionally a curse. It’s actually busy for soccer and basketball, however throughout baseball season, the off-season, there wasn’t as a lot depth to go there.”
Over the subsequent few months, the 6,800-square-foot house can be outfitted with a high-end music stage, says Bob Franklin, Tin Roof’s associate and CEO. The partitions can be redecorated with mulitcolored, reclaimed wooden and aluminum siding. The brand new Tin Roof Fort Lauderdale will make use of 50-70 full-time staffers, together with a steady of sound engineers to wire the music stage for nightly music acts. This can be Florida’s third Tin Roof bar after opening in Orlando in 2015 and on Delray Seashore’s buzzy Atlantic Avenue in 2019.
“We’ve acquired an excellent location and nice visibility,” Franklin says of the venue, which seats 220 folks inside and on its Andrews Avenue-facing patio. “I feel Fort Lauderdale has grown up a bit, and now there’s upscale retailers and professionals on the lookout for cool leisure experiences after they exit. That ticked all our packing containers.”
The addition of Tin Roof Fort Lauderdale is a boon for native and nationwide rock and nation acts which already play the venue’s different metropolitan areas in Detroit, New Orleans, San Diego, Baltimore and Memphis, Franklin says.
“We’re giving them another venue to plug into as they journey our Tin Roof community all around the nation,” he says. “There’s all the time demand for rising artists, and that retains us going.”
Tin Roof’s Nashville-inspired menu can be “practically equivalent” to that of Tin Roof Delray Seashore, Franklin says. Dishes embody Nashville sizzling hen, fried pickles, barbecue pulled pork quesadillas, burgers, mac ‘n’ cheese, and a collection of a la carte tacos. Their bar touts craft cocktails, draft beers, wines and Pink Bull-infused drinks.
Tin Roof Fort Lauderdale, at 219 S. Andrews Ave., is predicted to debut later this fall. Go to TinRoofBars.com.
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