By Thomas Crone
Photograph by Mark Gilliland
Developing a nightclub at the corner of Boyle and Manchester might have seemed folly just a couple of years ago. But doing it now, well, that just shows an ability to locate the next hot club zone.
Proprietors Neil Harris and Rusty Woody not only run the newish Alternative Music Pub/AMP, they live above the space, which had been abandoned and boarded up for 20 years. Their commitment to helping revitalize what’s become known as the Manchester Strip is augmented by the knowledge that more nightspots are on the way.
“There are so many buildings with such great potential,” Harris says. “It’s interesting for the people who’ve not been in the area for a few years. But we’ve been telling people that if they can bring a business down here, do it.”
The Manchester Strip lies roughly along a revived stretch of the road between Tower Grove to the west and Vandeventer to the east. For some time, gay and lesbian-themed nightspots have found homes here, but the arrival of JaBoni’s and Mangrove on the western edge began to open up the playing field. By late winter and early spring, an additional handful of new venues—the Kentucky Club and the already well-regarded Atomic Cowboy, which is moving from the hot Maplewood strip of Manchester—will be open on the block, a trend that should see complementary businesses bringing new faces to the area. Those clubs will join an eclectic cast of rooms now in place, such as AMP, Freddie’s, the moved-and-remodeled Novak’s Bar & Grill and Spot, which took over the room left by Novak’s.
Kristen Goodman manages Spot, a comfortable, new, Asian-flavored room, with a cabaret theater in the back. Like Harris, she’s enjoying the relative calm of the street now, as regulars wander back and forth between the two rooms. As a businessperson, she’s looking forward to the influx that’ll surely come in a couple of months, when the nightclub resurgence and a related trend toward residential renovation in neighboring areas bring in more daytime business.
“We welcome more clubs opening up, but we need a few more restaurants, a few retail stores, a real coffeehouse, a gym and some B-and-Bs,” Harris says. “And then we’re set to go.”
“It’ll be more fun when it pops,” Goodman says. “But it’s nice to know that you’re on a block that’s coming up, rather than one that’s fading out.”
