Two Nashville attorneys are planning to open a pub in a former church building located in East Nashville, seven blocks north of Five Points.
The business will be called Eastwood Assembly and operate at 714 Gallatin Ave.
Jim Higgins and Rick Piliponis, partners with SoBro-based The Higgins Firm, bought the property for $1.02 million in May, Metro records show. Prior to that, the property changed ownership hands in 2007 for $172,500.
Metro has approved a variance that will allow for a beer permit. However, Higgins and Piliponis have a structural engineer evaluating the building, which might delay the pub’s opening.
“We love how the church has been part of the neighborhood and want to embrace that history,” Higgins says. “Our plan was to incorporate into the building a neighborhood-type restaurant and pub that local residents could walk to, hence the Eastwood Assembly. We want to try to embrace as much of the original church feel as possible.
“Unfortunately, we have since encountered a significant structural problem,” he adds. “Everything is on hold until we can determine the cost and possibility of rehabbing the building. We are going to do all we can to keep the building.”
Believed to have been constructed in the 1940s and once home to the New Destiny Christian Fellowship and the Miracle Worker Temple, the building sits across Gallatin Avenue from a Kroger along a busy stretch of East Nashville. In 2008, a previous owner sought to reinvent the building to accommodate a club called the Mercury Theater, according to Metro documents.
This is not the two attorneys’ first foray into the East Nashville food and beverage scene. In 2015, they purchased the then-Hunters Custom Automotive lot at 974 Main St. near Five Points and that is now home to Noble’s Kitchen and Beer Hall (which the two businessmen own). That restaurant is located across the street from Fresh Hospitality’s Hunters Station food hall, also located on a former Hunters lot.
Scene reporter Stephen Elliott contributed to this article.
