The building at 535 South Highland Street started out as the Normal movie theater. Later it was The Bluff, then Rooster's Blues House, then the live music room for Newby's. On Halloween night it was scheduled to open as The Country Club, a country music and line dancing bar with a mechanical bull and a hardwood dance floor.
That's five names on one address, and it's the best way to read what happened in Midtown this fall. Almost nothing on this season's list needed a new building. A breakfast chain took a storefront on Young Avenue. Two blocks of the Highland Strip got new operators. A Central Avenue restaurant closed after a year. A Thai restaurant signed on for the Cooper Street space Alchemy left when it closed in June 2025. The one newcomer with no lease at all is a trailer.
I've spent more than 30 years buying, renovating and managing buildings, and the pattern is familiar to me. In an older commercial district, the walls stay put and the businesses inside them change. Here's how that played out this fall, block by block.
The Highland Strip: one room, five lives
The Country Club comes from three owners who all work in Memphis food and drink already. Alex Rasmussen is an owner of Barons, Tim Quinn owns Madison Tavern, and Corey Likens is general manager of Minglewood Hall and 1884 Lounge. According to the Memphis Flyer, the three have been friends since grade school at Holy Rosary.
Rasmussen told the Flyer the building suits the concept because it's "all wood. It was built for this." He also described "a very intimate stage and balcony to see live music," and pointed out that Prince, Creed, Nickelback and John Mayer have all played inside its walls.
What's going in, according to the Flyer and WhatNow Memphis:
- A large hardwood dance floor and a mechanical bull
- A boot-fitting station, where you get measured one week and pick up your boots the next
- Pool tables
- Neon signs and photos of honky-tonks on the walls, in a brown and red color scheme
- A menu from Quinn built on country classics like country-fried steak, mashed potatoes and biscuits
The bar's own website offers a $9.99-a-month membership that covers every line dancing class and lets members skip the line at the door. The Memphis Business Journal ran the Oct. 31 opening date in a headline on Oct. 28.
Newby's itself, the business that used to run that music room, is part of this fall's story too. The Daily Memphian reported that the bar, a Highland Strip fixture for 50 years, reopened under new management on Thursday, Aug. 20. So between late August and Halloween, two neighboring rooms on the Strip ended up with new people running them, and neither one had to be built from scratch.
Cooper-Young: a breakfast spot designed for staying a while
Big Bad Breakfast's second Memphis location, at 2149 Young Ave., was scheduled to open Tuesday, Sept. 29, after a soft opening on Sept. 26. The first Memphis location opened in the River Oaks area of East Memphis in 2021. The chain comes from Oxford chef and cookbook author John Currence and now has more than 29 locations across the Southeast, according to WREG.
Hours are 7 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. daily, for breakfast, brunch and lunch. On the menu are Southern standards, some heart-healthy dishes, cocktails and mocktails, and Currence's biscuits. The Daily Memphian's dining guide adds gravies, egg dishes and pancakes to that list.
The layout says the most about how this location fits Cooper-Young. WREG reported that the restaurant added a lounge-style seating area so people can get a coffee, work on a laptop or meet a friend without ordering a full meal. A restaurant that closes at 2:30 makes all its money in the morning. A lounge where people can stop in for just a coffee gives it a way to fill seats between breakfast and lunch.
Currence explained to WREG why he picked Memphis. "Coming from Oxford, Memphis is an important town for me because, like the brand, it is filled with soul, grit and an unfailingly scrappy and genuine spirit that could not embody the South any more than it does."
The other side of turnover: a closing and a long wait
Every opening above has a matching vacancy somewhere, and this fall had two.
The Daily Memphian reported that No Comment, at 2155 Central Ave., announced on Tuesday, Sept. 29, that it would close. Its last day of service was Saturday, Oct. 17. The restaurant began as a wine bar the year before and lasted about a year in Midtown. That means the same week Big Bad Breakfast was getting ready to open on Young Avenue, a few blocks away on Central another room was getting ready to go dark.
The former Alchemy space shows how long it can take a restaurant room to turn over. Alchemy closed in June 2025. In October 2026, the Daily Memphian reported that a Thai restaurant called Basil and Jade is going into the 4,500-square-foot space at 940 S. Cooper St. Owner Lorena Leong expects to open in about six months. If that estimate holds, the space will have gone from Alchemy's last night to Basil and Jade's first one in close to two years.
Gaps like that are common when a restaurant space changes hands. Kitchens, hoods, grease traps, restrooms and dining room layouts were all built for the last operator's menu, and the new tenant usually has to rework at least some of them. A space that size takes time to plan, permit and finish, even when the walls stay where they are.
The one newcomer without a building
Argento Foods, an Argentinian empanada business, took the opposite approach. In early October, the Daily Memphian reported that it had bought its first food trailer and planned to park it between Playhouse on the Square and the gas station at Union Avenue and Cooper Street.
A trailer doesn't need a long lease or a build-out like the one Basil and Jade faces. It gets an Argentinian menu onto one of Midtown's busiest corners for a fraction of the commitment a permanent room takes.
Midtown's fall changes at a glance
| Business | Address | What changed | Reported |
|---|---|---|---|
| Newby's | Highland Strip | Reopened under new management Aug. 20 | Daily Memphian, Aug. 21, 2026 |
| Big Bad Breakfast | 2149 Young Ave. | Second Memphis location, set to open Sept. 29 | WREG, Sept. 16, 2026 |
| No Comment | 2155 Central Ave. | Last service Oct. 17 | Daily Memphian, Oct. 2026 |
| The Country Club | 535 S. Highland St. | Honky-tonk, set to open Oct. 31 | Memphis Flyer, Sept. 21, 2026 |
| Argento Foods | Union Ave. and Cooper St. | Empanada trailer planned near Playhouse on the Square | Daily Memphian, Oct. 5, 2026 |
| Basil and Jade | 940 S. Cooper St. | Thai restaurant, opening in about six months | Daily Memphian, Oct. 7, 2026 |
Read down the address column and nearly every line is a room that already had a history. Newby's ran on Highland for 50 years before its new managers took over. The Country Club will be at least the fifth business in its building once it opens. Basil and Jade is taking over Alchemy's former room. No Comment's space on Central is now open for whoever comes next.
If you own one of Midtown's older commercial buildings, or you're thinking about leasing one, the details in this post are the ones that decide whether a deal works: how long the space has been empty, what the last tenant left behind, and what it will cost to fit the room to a new use. I've renovated and managed buildings like these, and I'm glad to walk through a specific space with you before you sign anything. Anthony Lavelle can help. Start a Conversation.
