PASTOR BALKS AT HIGHER PRICE FOR BAMBOO ROOM
Former nightclub’s price became too expensive for Common Ground.
Two years ago,
LAKE WORTH — Common Ground Church pastor Mike Olive moved into the legendary Bamboo Room, the famed and troubled nightclub
— on South J Street.
—
Common Ground, a Southern
Baptist Church, had held Sunday services at the 8,142-square-foot club for several months prior to the move.
Olive eventually planned to buy the club in the Paradise Building at 25 South J Street and owned by Ryan Mueller of RJM Real Estate in Delray Beach, finance industry veteran Blaine Minton and one silent partner.
“This will be a great venue for the entire community,” Olive said at the time.
Plans didn’t work out, as the club’s price tag, according to Olive, grew from $1.2 million to north of $1.5 million. “It was going up from there,” Olive said. “We got priced out.”
Mueller did notrespond to several requests for comment, but
did speak with The Palm Beach Post in April 2016.
As for why Mueller and his
partners want to sell or lease the Bamboo Room, Mueller said the property was purchased as an investment. “We had no intention of being there long-term,” he said. “We had our fun, now it’s time to let somebody else run it.”
The new owners paid $710,000 to purchase the building, another $130,000 for a liquor license and an additional $60,000 to add value to the property.
Olive’s last Bamboo Room church service was Sunday.
“They’re not closing, but they
want to go in a different direction,” he said. “A bar is possibly going to be moving in.”
With The Bamboo Room out of the picture, earlier this year, Olive began looking for a new spot. He found one at 1201 S. Federal Highway, about a mile from where the club is located.
“We have a contract on a building and will be closing at the end of May on our own building in Lake Worth,” he said.
Olive declined to reveal the purchase price. “I’d rather not say until it’s all done,” he said. “But we got a good deal on it.”
The site is just under 4,000 square feet, Olive said.
The site will be the nonprofit’s permanent home for all its programming, includ- ing instrumental music lessons (private and group), a community children’s choir, an artist co-lab program and arts education classes, Olive said.
There is also a plan for an arts-based preschool, he added. The part-time church will rent the space on Sundays. “It’ll be a busy building,” Olive said. “Everything we did at the Bamboo Room was kind of a pilot for us.”
The site, however, won’t be ready for another four to six months because of the renovation work, Olive said. “We’ll have to spend about $50,000 to $70,000,” he said.
Commissioner Omari Hardy supported Olive’s move. “I don’t know if I would be who I am without Mike Olive and his family and the Hardy Olive’s millennials, night coffee mon people For wonderful Ground at shop. the son, together,” Olive’s would past Justin, “We every does South thing meet two Hardy would and Monday to J years, Street Com- bring other with said. discuss was development being,” really life he and important said. that, as a for human for me, my
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Olive said The Bamboo Room was a fantastic loca- tion for a music room and a bar. But it wasn’t the best place for his music acad- emy and some of the kids programs he wanted to do.
“But it was a great expe- rience and we had a lot of great services there,” he said.
Olive has had a few run- ins with Lake Worth officials. In 2015, the city said he needed a special permit to hold church services at a coffee shop. City Manager Michael Bornstein told The Post in October 2015 there was a “dust-up” that was politicized and generated some confusion. At the time, Olive had said it appeared churches were being singled out and was quoted as saying the city wasn’t tolerant of Christians living a public life downtown. “All those problems are behind us now,” Olive said three years ago. Commissioner Andy Amoroso, who runs Studio 205 and Java Juice Bar on Lake Avenue, has been critical of Olive in the past. “He’s catering to sober homes,” Amoroso said. “I have a problem with him bringing in busloads of soberhome people you’re supposed to be helping to an entertainment business. If that’s what he’s going to do, more power to him.”