A press release from Nashville mayor John Cooper this week announced that in addition to three floors, live music stages, and multiple bars, Garth Brooks’s forthcoming downtown entertainment venue, Friends in Low Places, will feature a Metro Nashville Police Department substation.
Brooks became the latest celebrity to lend his name (and financial support) to opening a restaurant and bar on Music City’s Lower Broadway in April, joining musicians like Miranda Lambert, Justin Timberlake, and Eric Church. Since then we’ve learned that the three-story “classic honky tonk” is named after his hit song, Friends in Low Places. The space will be Brooks-themed, and the musician said he wants it to be “the Chick-fil-A of honky tonks.”
The mayor’s press release called it “a unique partnership” that will help the Nashville police department and the department of transportation “reduce traffic congestion and keep the city’s busiest few blocks secure.” Brooks will fund the development and construction of the substation in the alleyway beside the bar, the press release notes, “at no cost to Metro taxpayers.” As further explanation, the release says the city government essentially contracts out between 15 and 30 alleyways each year to “developers, property owners, and other third parties as part of the standard city planning and permitting process.”
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Brooks and team have not announced an expected opening for Friends in Low Places (411 Broadway) so far, though one of the bar’s most recent Instagram posts, about two months ago, said that it was “opening soon.”
