Is Jon Bon Jovi the Next Music Mogul to Back a Lower Broadway Bar?

Fresh off the news that Garth Brooks is opening a Lower Broadway “classic honkey tonk,” aka a Brooks-themed bar and entertainment venue, there’s another music star coming to town, reports the Nashville Business Journal. “Livin’ On A Prayer” star Jon Bon Jovi is reportedly a partner in a forthcoming Lower Broadway bar alongside a Nashville real estate firm.

The Journal reports that Bon Jovi has teamed up with Big Plan Holdings, which purchased the empty lot at 405 Broadway in November 2020, for the venue (the lot, at the intersection of Broadway and Fourth Avenue, sits between Nudie’s and Merchants and is abutted by Losers). Apparently, an LLC registered with the state that’s associated with Bon Jovi has filed a number of trademarks in Tennessee that use “JBJ” as part of the name.

Bon Jovi first entered the restaurant industry more than a decade ago, when he co-founded the nonprofit community restaurant JBJ Soul Kitchen in Red Bank, New Jersey, eventually opening two more, in Tom’s River and on the Rutgers University campus. Those restaurants, which are donation-based in order to feed those who can’t pay free of cost, is associated with Bon Jovi’s JBJ Soul Foundation.

Meanwhile, this new venture would appear to be all business. There aren’t many further confirmed details about the venue, however, on the Big Plan website, a listing for 405 Broadway says: “Big Plan Holdings closed on 405 Broadway in October of 2020 for $9.4 million, a record-setting deal for a downtown real estate land transaction. Co-founders Josh and Tara Joseph have plans for a multi-story music and entertainment venue with developments slated to start in Q1 of 2022.” In October 2021, Joseph told the Business Journal that the project had a celebrity branding partner.

If plans for a “multi-story music and entertainment venue” sound familiar, it might be because the same is in the works for 411 Broadway, the project backed by Garth Brooks. Since the news of Brooks’s involvement in the forthcoming bar earlier this month, he’s confirmed a few additional details, primarily the bar’s name, “Friends in Low Places.” He also added that he wants it to be “the Chick-fil-A of honky-tonks,” apparently in terms of friendliness.

Brooks and Bon Jovi are just the latest celebrities to invest in Lower Broadway businesses — in the two years since the pandemic began, Justin Timberlake’s Twelve Thirty Club at 550 Broadway and Miranda Lambert’s Casa Rosa at ​​308 Broadway have both opened, and Eric Church recently announced plans for a behemoth Broadway bar that will serve Rodney Scott’s barbecue.

There’s no word on when the venue is projected to open, though Big Plan Holdings says construction on the 7,000-square-foot lot began earlier this year.