The Midtown property home to Tin Angel has sold for about $1.33 million — but the venerable restaurant is set to remain open with a new landlord.
The buyer of the site at 3201 West End Ave. is GF Office LLC, which is affiliated with Nashville-based Grace Development, according to a Metro document. The seller is 32 Partners, which acquired the 0.23-acre site in April 2006 for $475,000. Veteran local restaurateur Rick Bolsom, who created with various investors 32 Partners to buy the property, also co-owns Tin Angel with his wife Vicki and investors.
“It was a real estate decision and a very comfortable transaction,” says Rick Bolsom. “You have a point, in any investment, the conversation shifts to ‘What’s the end game?’
“Grace Development are excellent people and we have great regard for them,” he continues. “If it was somebody who wanted to demo the building … I don’t think there would have been a conversation at that point.”
The one-story masonry building was constructed in the 1930s, and the Bolsoms have given it various updates since opening Tin Angel in 1993. At that time, the two were known for their work with Cakewalk. They would later open with business partners both Mirror in 12South and Zola (in the former Cakewalk space and with Deb Paquette and Ernie Paquette).
The Bolsoms expanded the Tin Angel space in 2005, taking the small space that had been home to salon Ezzo's.
Tin Angel was named for a Greenwich Village restaurant of the same name and where Rick, a native New Yorker, told the Scene in 1997, he “spent many happy hours.” As such, the Bolsoms have given Tin Angel a feel reminiscent of the former Greenwich Village restaurant, he says.
Bolsom, who helped start Nashville Originals — a group of locally based restaurant owners — says he has about 30 employees at Tin Angel.
