Miami Valley Sports Bar reopens after 5-month makeover
Celebrates 25 years in West Carrollton with ‘new chapter.’
Miami Valley Sports Bar, one of the Dayton area’s largest restaurant-pubs, reopens today following an extensive five-month makeover.
“We wanted to do a refresh for our 25th year in business,” owner Julie Delph said. “We just didn’t expect to do anything quite this extensive. But that’s how it turned out, and now we can’t wait to show it off to our customers.
“It’s a new chapter,” Delph said of the makeover, which she said will approach $200,000 in total cost.
The 12,000-squarefoot sports pub with a 3,000-square-foot patio is at 930 Watertower Lane just off State Route 725 west of I-75 in West Carrollton. It reopen at 4 p.m. today after being closed since March, when the initial mandatory shutdown of bars and dine-in service was ordered by state health officials and Gov. Mike DeWine.
Like many home improvements, the makeover of Miami Valley Sports Bar started small, and grew larger and more ambitious (and expensive) with time.
“We started with just taking out the carpet and doing a cleanup to get COVID-ready in about two weeks,” Delph said. “When the stay-athome order was extended, we thought, ‘Well, we’ll do the bathrooms.’ We took those down to the bare walls and floors and started from scratch.”
Then the makeover bug started to spread. Delph decided to remove a wall and parts of other walls in order to expand the bar area and make room for booths and other seating. A new concrete bar top was poured. Parts of the interior — which features 18 pool tables, cornhole boards, darts and other games and resembles an indoor playground for adults
— were reconfigured.
Space that had been devoted to a basketball hoop and Skee-ball area became seating. In the end, even with tables socially distanced or separated by high-back barriers, Miami Valley Sports Bar will gain some seating capacity with the makeover, to about 160.
Customers will be greeted with another new feature before they even enter the building: A sweeping mural on an exterior wall showing a bald eagle and American flag, created by local artist Erica Arndts.
The pub will reopen with all of its regular drink specials, including a selection of craft and domestic beers on tap. Several sandwiches and a meat-and-cheese tray have been added to the menu, which will still include pizza, Delph said.
And the Miami Valley Sports Bar owner says she wants to keep customers happy beyond the 10 p.m. sales curfew for alcoholic drinks that must be consumed by 11 p.m., under an Ohio Liquor Commission rule suggested by DeWine.
“The evening doesn’t have to end then,” Delph said. “We will be staying open later and offering cold-brew coffee, specialty teas and other non-alcoholic options. We want people to stay.
“It’s strange to take such a tragic time to start a new beginning, but that’s what we’ve done,” Delph said.