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 Super Bowl events — abruptly closed on May 12 after 4 years within the downtown space.
Tim Petrillo, cofounder of The Restaurant People (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 just a few hours after promoting the lease to Tin Roof, a Nashville-based, barbecue-and-live-music chain that’s anticipated to reopen in that area later this fall.
“We made money on it. It was a great deal for us,” Petrillo informed the South Florida Sun Sentinel on Friday morning, though he declined to reveal the acquisition value. “We’re not sad that we closed this store. They offered us a good number, and it was good for both sides.”
The sports activities pub at 219 S. Andrews Ave., throughout the historic McCrory Building, took up an enviable perch downtown: subsequent to The Wharf Fort Lauderdale, Las Olas Boulevard and a sprawl of latest residential towers. When it debuted in 2018, Township’s menu leaned on German-style bratwursts and pretzels but additionally 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. But as school 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 tough to run a college-town business in a more upscale downtown,” says Petrillo, who has owned the constructing with real-estate investor Steven Halmos since 1998. “It’s great to be a sports bar, but it’s also a curse. It’s really busy for football and basketball, but during baseball season, the low season, there wasn’t as much intensity to go there.”
Over the subsequent few months, the 6,800-square-foot area might be geared up with a high-end music stage, says Bob Franklin, Tin Roof’s accomplice and CEO. The partitions might be redecorated with mulitcolored, reclaimed wooden and aluminum siding. The 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 might be Florida’s third Tin Roof bar after opening in Orlando in 2015 and on Delray Beach’s buzzy Atlantic Avenue in 2019.
“We’ve got a great location and great visibility,” Franklin says of the venue, which seats 220 individuals inside and on its Andrews Avenue-facing patio. “I think Fort Lauderdale has grown up a bit, and now there’s upscale shops and professionals looking for cool entertainment experiences when they go out. That ticked all our boxes.”
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 places in Detroit, New Orleans, San Diego, Baltimore and Memphis, Franklin says.
“We’re giving them one more venue to plug into as they travel our Tin Roof network all over the country,” he says. “There’s always demand for emerging artists, and that keeps us going.”
Tin Roof’s Nashville-inspired menu might be “nearly identical” to that of Tin Roof Delray Beach, Franklin says. Dishes embody Nashville scorching 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 Red Bull-infused drinks.
Tin Roof Fort Lauderdale, at 219 S. Andrews Ave., is anticipated to debut later this fall. Go to TinRoofBars.com.
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Source: www.bostonherald.com