New Life for the Old Roxy in East Nashville

EAST NASHVILLE, TN — An iconic former theater in East Nashville may be springing back to life.

A group led by Elliot Kyle paid $1.3 million for the Roxy Theater at 827 Meridian Street in the heart of Cleveland Park. The long-vacant 9,352 square-foot theater was on Historic Nashville's Nashville Nine list of endangered historic properties in 2013.

Kyle told The Tennessean his group, which already owns the historic McGavock House and Jack Ward & Sons Plumbing building on Meridian, plans for an entertainment venue and restaurant in the old movie house.

"We're preservationists at heart and we're looking forward to restoring the Roxy to its former glory as an anchor of this iconic Nashville neighborhood," he told the newspaper.

The Roxy building was built in 1914, originally as a drug store on the Interurban street car line. It opened as a whites-only theater in 1937 and closed in 1959, before integration. In the decades since, it has been used for church services, storage, a day care and a laundromat but has been largely vacant in recent years.

Image via Julie Robison, Historic Nashville Inc.