Since 2000, Sam's Sports Grill has been a popular destination for eating, drinking, watching sports on television and competing at trivia while partaking in those first three activities. The HIllsboro Village location has been the flagship property of the small chain, which has expanded to six restaurants over the past decade and a half. Bites commenters have been curious about the progress of the newest Sam's in the old Bread & Co. building off Highway 100 near the split. Combined with the uncertainty over a reopening date after a recent fire in the original location, I figured it was a good time to reach out to Al Thomas, the owner of Sam's.
The upshot of our conversation was ... West Meade Sam's fans, you'll soon be in luck, but Hillsboro Village denizens, not so much.
Thomas told me the Westgate Center Sam's has finally overcome a fire codes issue that required them to construct a much thicker exterior wall rated for a four-hour burn to protect the other stores in the strip mall, even though Sam's is installing sprinklers and the rest of the retail shops do not have them. After a protracted hold-up in construction to deal with these issues, work has finally continued at the newest link in the chainlet. Drywall is now going up, and Thomas estimates that the building is about 70 percent completed. He anticipates opening in late September.
This Sam's will look different from the other locations, which befits the neighborhood where it is going. Tentatively naming it "Sam's Place" (de-emphasizing the sports bar aspects of the restaurant), Thomas also calls it "Conservative Sam's," joking: "I'm the 'Dr. Junk' guy who likes to put stuff all over the walls and hang bicycles from the ceiling. This one will be more subdued. But to me, any restaurant with TVs that are showing sports is basically a sports bar, so that's what we'll be."
Over in the Village, Thomas has also been working with bureaucracy in an attempt to reopen that sports bar, this time dealing with insurance adjusters. Complicating factors is that Thomas has also taken over the lease of the former Boscos restaurant and brewery next door to use their equipment to brew his own beer for all the Sam's locations and to establish Village Marketplace, a small market in the front of the building to feature local crafts and artisans. The real kicker is that his lease on both properties expires at the end of this year.
"Developers really want that property, and the owners lined up the two leases to expire at the same time about five years ago. We're really up in the air about reopening Sam's, and our lease converts to month-to-month in January. I haven't seen any formal development plans go in front of the planning commission, but I know that they want to do what they did with the building next door."
If the future is up in the air for Sam's, it has completely exited the atmosphere for Village Marketplace in the old Boscos space. "It was all great until Sam's burned," explains Thomas. "The Marketplace wasn't a profit center, and the stars just never lined up on the concept of brewing our own beers. We've told the vendors in the Marketplace that we're pulling the plug at the end of the year."
Thomas is not a fan of the direction that Hillsboro Village is headed. "The overall energy of the Village is waning," With regard to the new development that houses Double Dogs and Jeni's, he is even more frank. "It looks like hell," he says. "I can't believe the neighborhood didn't demand that it look like the rest of the Village."
Still, Thomas is trying to make the best of an unfortunate situation and has listed the Boscos brewing equipment on the ProBrewer.com online forum with a price of $180,000 for a turnkey seven-barrel system, complete with six fermenting tanks, eight serving tanks and all lines, taps, glycol systems, pumps, hoses, grain, yeast and 100-plus kegs. So if you're of a mind to start up your own brewery and have the willingness to rip all that equipment out of the back of the building, you might want to check out the listing. Thomas even invites prospective buyers to the small taproom in the Village Marketplace to sample a beer brewed on the system.
So it looks like Nashville will end up with a net wash when it comes to the number of operating Sam's locations by the beginning of next year. But Thomas did have another little news nugget to share about another one of his properties, but you'll have to wait a few days to hear about that one. I'll be busy in my basement with a tape measure trying to figure out if I can fit those tanks in next to the water heater.
