Palm Fronds Over the Honky-Tonks: Kygo’s Club Takes a Lower Broadway Rooftop
Lower Broadway has spent a decade stacking rooftops. On September 4 it gets one with palm trees on it.
Palm Tree Club — the nightlife brand built around Norwegian producer and DJ Kygo — opens at 200 Broadway, on the rooftop of the building that houses Eric Church's Chief's. It is the brand's fifth club, following Miami, Orlando, Las Vegas and Kansas City, and its first address inside Nashville's entertainment district.
What's going in
The space is being built for live performances and ticketed events rather than as a straight bar-with-a-view, which is a meaningful distinction on a street where the default rooftop business model is beer and a sightline. Leadership has left the door open to full concerts and even a Nashville edition of the Palm Tree Music Festival.
The development partner is AJ Capital, the firm behind a string of Nashville hospitality projects including Pastis, Momotaro and the Hermès build. The rooftop previously housed the Nashville outpost of James Beard-winning pitmaster Rodney Scott's Whole Hog BBQ.
Palm Tree Crew, the parent company, spent roughly six months studying Nashville's entertainment district before landing here. Their read was that Broadway is saturated with country-and-cover-band rooftops and thin on the upscale, dance-forward room the brand runs elsewhere — a demographic that currently leaves downtown to find a DJ.
Kygo's other business
Most people know Kygo as the tropical-house producer who remixed his way onto every summer playlist a decade ago. The more interesting story is what he built next.
In about six years, Palm Tree Crew has assembled four clubs and a hotel, picked up a golf course and a cocktail bar, and invested across a portfolio that includes the soda brand Poppi, Sip Margs and The Finnish Long Drink. The company has been valued at roughly $215 million and is backed by the talent agency WME. Nashville is not a vanity outpost for a DJ; it is the fifth node in a hospitality company that happens to be fronted by one.
Why Broadway keeps working
There is a version of this story where a national nightlife brand plants a flag on Broadway and locals roll their eyes. Fair enough. But the reason Broadway keeps absorbing these projects is that it is one of the few entertainment districts in America where the foot traffic genuinely justifies the rent — a walkable corridor of live music that runs seven nights a week and pulls visitors from every direction.
What has been missing is variety. Broadway's rooftops overwhelmingly sell the same thing to the same crowd. A room built for DJs and ticketed shows is a different proposition, and if it works, it changes who comes downtown on a Friday and what they expect when they get there.
Opening night is Friday, September 4.
New to the street? Start with our local's guide to the Broadway honky-tonks. Coming in from out of town for opening weekend — book your stay »
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