The Star Community Bar, a Little 5 Points landmark for 35 years, will close at the end of the year. The owners of Midtown's Red Light Cafe have purchased The Star Bar and while they plan to retain some of the venue's programming and are offering employment to its staff, they will be retiring the Star Bar name.
ToNeTo Atlanta was first made aware of the sale last week but as a courtesy to the staffs of both businesses opted to wait until today's official press release to publish.
Entrepreneurs David Heany and Marty Nolan opened Star Community Bar on Halloween night 1991 at 437 Moreland Avenue in the heart of Little 5 Points. The bar occupied a roughly 6,000 square foot space previously home to the "Moreland Avenue Office" of Citizens & Southern National Bank (C&S Bank). One of the bank's old vaults is now a shrine to Elvis, a feature the new owners plan to retain.
In addition to serving as a venue for local and regional musical acts, the Star Bar also hosted weekly comedy and karaoke nights. Heany and Nolan sold the bar in 2001. Heany passed away in late 2018, Nolan in late 2021.
In the years since Heany and Nolan's sale, the popular venue has changed hands several times, most recently in 2019 when Luke Lewis, Christopher Jackson, Dustin Mumma, and Bruce McLeod purchased it.
The venue closed at the end of 2019 and due to the pandemic did not reopen again until 2021. Then, in 2022, Atlanta developer Third & Urban almost demolished the bar to build a mixed-use development, but terminated the contract after the community rallied around Star Bar.
In advance of prior sales, the bar had been marketed for sale. It's unclear if the owners were quietly looking to sell or were simply presented with an offer too good to refuse.
Ellen Chamberlain, who purchased Red Light Cafe from its founders, brothers Bill and Mark Hoover in 2012, converted the business from the coffee shop that it started as in 1991, into the blues, jazz, and Americana music venue it is today.
Red Light Cafe is currently located on Amsterdam Avenue at Amsterdam Walk and like the rest of the property's existing tenants, needed to find a new home given the imminent redevelopment planned by Atlanta-based Portman Holdings that will bring hundreds of new apartments to the roughly eleven acre property. (Fellow former Amsterdam Walk tenant Estate Sales 365 earlier this month relocated to Toco Hills shopping center.)
Plans call for both Red Light Cafe's last day in Amsterdam Walk and Star Bar's last day in business to occur December 31, with Red Light slated to reopen in the Star Bar space soon after the new year.
Are you sad to see Star Bar close for good? What Atlanta venue of yesteryear do you miss the most? Are you pleased to know Red Light Cafe will continue some of the Star Bar programming?
Please share your thoughts below.
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