Ryman Hospitality PropertiesWork will begin soon to transform the space at 300 Broadway in Music City into Ole Red Nashville. Blake Shelton and Ryman Hospitality Properties CEO Collin Reed announced their partnership to open two new entertainment venues Thursday on the stage of the iconic auditorium from which the corporation takes its name.
The company will spend $20 million to transform the 26,000-square-foot space into a multi-level entertainment venue, which should open in 2018.
Blake says for him, much of the appeal of Ole Red Nashville is its location near the epicenter of country music.
“This place is going to be about music at the end of the day, for me,” the star of The Voice says. “With the Ryman down here and the Grand Ole Opry, I’m sure that’s how it found its way to Broadway. These places started popping up down here and it’s the hot spot.”
Ole Red Tishomingo, in Blake’s Oklahoma hometown, is set to open even before the Nashville flagship, and he’s already entertaining the likelihood of more locations to come.
“There’s nowhere else like this in the world, you know,” he says of Music City’s downtown district. “With Ole Red, when we hopefully start expanding it, there’s no telling where one of these things may pop up next. There’ll be a little piece of Broadway wherever we go with it, you know.”
Ole Red takes its name from Blake’s third career hit, “Ol’ Red,” with the spelling changed to mirror that of the Grand Ole Opry.
Ole Red Tishomingo should open in late 2017, coincidentally in an expanded space that used to house Miranda Lambert’s Pink Pistol boutique, in the days when she and Blake were married.
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