Cory Graves
Fuzzy’s Taco Shop and A Trio of Proven Scene Vets Sign Lease to Re-Open La Grange Space.
It only took two months.
At 3 o’clock this afternoon, a new ownership team — one featuring the owners of Fuzzy’s Taco Shop, plus former La Grange manager and longtime Dallas talent buyer Scott Beggs, Tactics Productions owner and talent buyer Kris Youmans and Elm Street Tattoo owner and internationally renowned tattoo artist Oliver Peck — signed a multi-year lease with Westdale Properties to reopen the La Grange space, which closed abruptly in mid-November.
Plans for the space include the installation of Fuzzy’s Taco Shop’s first Deep Ellum location (in La Grange’s former restaurant half) and a renovation of the performance room, which will be re-branded as a venue called Three Links and which will be run by Beggs, Youmans and Peck.
“We’ve tossed around the idea for a while now,” Youmans says, explaining that his team has been negotiating various potential deals for the space not long after former La Grange owner Stephanie Schumacher first announced her intentions to sell the space in September of 2011. “The plan is for it to remain very much what it was. We’ll have rock shows, punk shows, indie shows. It will be the same type of club that La Grange was, just maybe a different decor.”
The La Grange brand will continue as a concept and business owned by Schumacher — just one no longer tied or connected to the 2704 Elm Street address or the new businesses moving in.
The first show to be hosted under the Three Links banner will take place on Saturday, February 9, as local talent buying agency Parade of Flesh hosts Los Angeles hardcore act Terror on a bill also featuring Dallas’ own Power Trip. Other confirmed upcoming shows include a March 17 performance from Off With Their Heads and Teenage Bottlerocket, an April 11 show from Angry Samoans, and a Voodoo Glow Skulls show on April 24. Other shows may pop up sporadically on the new space’s calendar in the coming months, Beggs says, but the venue won’t host regular performances until the new Fuzzy’s location formally opens and venue renovations are complete. Beggs expects the restaurant and venue to be fully operational be late March or early April.
Renovations to the venue space include a new sound system, new lighting and a new, secret society-oriented decor, a nod to the venue’s name, which references a secondary name for the Odd Fellows society of which Beggs, Youmans and Peck are all members. Peck will be in charge of the decor, the venue’s not-yet-unveiled logo and its visual branding.
“We’ll probably just fill the place with stuff from the Webb Gallery,” Beggs says with a laugh, referencing the Waxahachie gallery owned by friend of the new ownership team and fellow Odd Fellows member Bruce Webb. “I have been promised that the restaurant will be the most edgy of all the Fuzzy’s, too, which is exciting.”
Beggs will be in charge of booking and managing the Three Links venue. Youmans will book shows to the space, too, but plans to continue placing Tactics Productions affairs at other venues around town as it currently does.
“It’s open to other promoters,” Youmans says, emphasizing his hope that Three Links’ booking will be a joint venture between himself, Beggs and other, independent entities. “I don’t want anyone to think this is just my club.”
“We’ve already reached out to a lot of other booking companies in town,” Beggs adds. “A number of them already have holds on the calendar, too.”
The space will retain La Grange’s Specific Use Permit and will sell alcohol under a catering license until its liquor license application is approved. Beyond that, the lone paperwork the new ownership team is waiting on from the city before opening is their space’s Certificate of Occupancy.
Once that all falls into place, Beggs and Youmans say they expect the new space to quickly find its legs.
“The biggest difference is that we’re going to have stability on the restaurant side, which is something we never had,” says Beggs, explaining one difference he anticipates existing between Three Links and La Grange. “The venue [at La Grange] always ran fine.”
“It’s a great small room,” adds Youmans. “And this town could really use one of those right now. We want to turn it into a cool, little, nationally recognized, 200-capacity club. We want to build a brand with it.”