Pryor Cashman’s Real Estate and Restaurant, Food + Beverage Groups successfully assisted their clients  Ken Sturm, Gadi Peleg and Gary Korn in structuring, negotiating and financing a joint venture with Ryman Hospitality Properties (NYSE: RHP), a real estate investment trust which operates the Grand Ole Opry, the legendary weekly showcase of country music’s finest performers; the Ryman Auditorium, the storied former home of the Grand Ole Opry located in downtown Nashville; and 650 AM WSM, the Opry’s radio home, for the Opry’s first satellite location in its more than 90-year history. Opry City Stage opened on December 1, 2017 at 1604 Broadway, between West 48th and West 49th Streets in the heart of New York City’s Times Square to great country music fanfare.

Opry City Stage is a 28,000-square-foot music and food venue, which takes up four floors. The space features real-time performances from the Opry’s Nashville stage streamed live onto City Stage screens. On the fourth floor, The Studio at Opry City Stage is a venue showcasing an array of music including that of hit-makers, emerging artists and songwriters. The venue’s Bluebird Cafe Songwriter Series spotlights songwriters from both Nashville and New York, as well as everywhere in between in the style of Music City’s Bluebird Cafe, a world-famous mecca both for those who pen songs and music fans who love them.

Peleg, Korn and Sturm brought in Bruce Bromberg, who along with his brother Eric — the heads of the Blue Ribbon restaurant empire — are doing the menu featuring the Brombergs’ take on Nashville’s famous hot chicken and Southern staples including meatloaf, mac and cheese, and homemade mashed potatoes and gravy.

The Pryor Cashman Team

Pryor Cashman Real Estate partners Wayne Heicklen, co-chair of the nationally-recognized Real Estate Group, and Benjamin Teig negotiated the sublease for 1604 Broadway while Heicklen, along with Corporate partner and co-chair of the firm’s Restaurant, Food + Beverage Group, Rich Frazer, and Corporate associate Francesca Djerejian, worked on the joint venture with Ryman, related financing and the restaurant aspects of the deal.