Ooltewah gets tap room; wine bar slated to open soon

Ooltewah is right next door to Collegedale, which only began to let restaurants sell beer by the drink in 2009 and is home to Southern Adventist University, where alcohol is forbidden on campus. The greater Ooltewah area has at least 10 Adventist churches, a denomination whose members generally abstain.

But more tippling will take place amid the teetotalers, since two new alcohol-themed businesses are back-to-back in a building at Cambridge Square. It's an upscale shopping center and soon-to-be residential development in Ooltewah (just inside Chattanooga city limits) at the corner of Ooltewah-Georgetown Road and Lee Highway, about half a mile from Interstate 75.

Staff photo by John Rawlston/Chattanooga Times Free Press Owner Marcus Garner, right, talks with manager Patrick Kenney at Wine Down, a soon-to-open wine tasting room that will also serve food, beer and liquor, on Tuesday, June 30, 2015, at Cambridge Square in the Ooltewah community in Chattanooga, Tenn. The recently-opened Heaven and Ale is located next door.

Heaven & Ale, a tap room with 30 craft beers for sale, opened recently, and Wine Down Ooltewah, a wine tasting room that also will serve beer, spirits and lunch and dinner, plans to open soon, once it gets its state liquor license.

"We want guests to come and relax and - no pun intended - wind down. This is their place after work," said Marcus Garner, who co-owns the wine bar with his wife, Georgia Garner. It's meant to give Ooltewah-area residents a place for some "adult time," he said, without having to "drive into Hamilton Place or Chattanooga."

Wine Down Ooltewah also will serve nonalcoholic drinks, Garner said, when asked about the greater Ooltewah area's non-drinking population.

"I have a lot of Seventh-day Adventist friends," he said. "There are plenty of Seventh-day Adventists here, but also a good population that aren't."

Food will include small bites to pair with wine, including cheeses, olives and charcuterie, or cold, cooked meats. The lunch and dinner menu will change about every week, Garner said, to keep things interesting.

"We'll do a burger," he said. "We're going to a lot of sandwiches. We'll do salads."

Wines will cost between $8 and $15 by the glass, and $14 to $200 by the bottle. The wine bar will offer a selection of 20 highly-rated wines for $20 or less, Garner said. Wine is to be consumed on site, but a bottle can be resealed and taken home if unfinished.

The wine bar will employ 10 people and will seat 54 customers inside and 32 on the patio. The Garners signed a five-year lease for the space.

Garner previously managed Hennen's Restaurant in downtown Chattanooga and before that worked as a food and beverage manager and general manager in Washington D.C., Virginia and Baltimore, M.D. for San Francisco-based boutique hotelier Kimpton Hotels and Restaurants.

The Garners saved up the roughly $100,000 they invested in their wine bar. Marcus said he tucked money away while working for Kimpton and the couple got an inheritance from Georgia's late mother, Karen Jacobson.

"This is what she wanted us to do with the money," Garners said.

His mother-in-law, who worked for Disney in Orlando, was the "happiest, greatest person ever," he said. As a reminder of her, he keeps a Walt Disney saying in his office that she always quoted, "If you dream it, you can achieve it."

Staff photo by John Rawlston/Chattanooga Times Free Press The recently-opened Heaven and Ale, the white building at left, is located next to Wine Down, a soon-to-open wine tasting room that will also serve food, beer and liquor, photographed on Tuesday, June 30, 2015, at Cambridge Square in the Ooltewah community in Chattanooga, Tenn.

Cambridge Square has only brought in locally-owned restaurants since opening two-and-a-half years ago, the development's spokesman Jim Cheney said. The first to open were Lupi's Pizza Pies and Southern Burger Co., both of which offer beer and wine. Heaven & Ale has one other location that opened in 2013 in North Chattanooga.

"There's a lot of people out there that like craft beer and like to have a glass of wine with dinner," Cheney said.

Yoga East Ooltewah is another business that opened at Cambridge Square, a planned, high-density and pedestrian-friendly development at which single-family homes should start going up toward the year's end.

"We've brought in some very different kinds of concepts to Ooltewah," Cheney said. "We're not a strip mall, we're not the big mall, we're not Gunbarrel Road."

Contact staff writer Tim Omarzu at tomarzu@timesfreepress.com or www.facebook.com/tim.omarzu or twitter.com/TimOmarzu or 423-757-6651.