The owners of a fast-growing Chattanooga freight brokerage company have bought a 116-year-old landmark in downtown's Southside that will serve as its new headquarters.
Chris Wang, chief executive of Taimen Transport, said he and partner Derek Steele have purchased the 1400 Cowart St. building that previously held the nightclub Coyote Jack's and was long known as home to the Southside Grill restaurant.
"We love the building," said Wang in a telephone interview. "It's a really cool, old, historic building."
Rudy Walldorf of Herman Walldorf Commercial Real Estate, who was the listing agent, said in an email that the purchase price for the vacant building was $1.7 million.
He said the building will be "substantially remodeled."
Wang said plans are to shift the business and a related asset-based trucking company, Taimen Trucklines, to the 21,000-square-foot structure. Currently, the company is leasing space at The Pointe Centre in East Brainerd, he said.
"We've outgrown the current space," he said.
Wang said he expects to eventually bring about 115 jobs to the Southside building. Currently, Taimen Transport has about 30 workers with plans to hire more before year's end, he said. Also, the trucking company has about 30 employees, though most of those are drivers, with plans to hire more there as well, Wang said.
He said the new owners expect to put about $3 million into a renovation. Plans are to gut the interior and redo the first and second floors, Also, new work will put a gym and wine cellar in the basement for employees and customers, Wang said.
In addition, plans call for a rooftop deck, the company CEO said.
Chattanooga has garnered a reputation as "freight alley" for its cluster of trucking, logistics and freight brokerage companies. Several of them have headquarters downtown because that's where many of their employees live, officials said.
Wang said that's true for Taimen as well.
"We've built the business around exceptionally talented people," he said. "We need more of those people."
Wang, 34, said the brokerage business was begun in 2012 with the trucking company coming in 2017.
While he grew up in New Orleans, his parents came to Chattanooga and he attended Baylor School. He left the city for college but then returned and helped start the business, he said.
Wang said that in the past two years, Taimen Transport has landed on Inc. magazine's list of the fastest-growing 5,000 companies in the U.S.
"We expect to continue that trend," he said.
The supply chain problems that emerged after the start of the coronavirus pandemic have created "an opportunity to help new customers with unique challenges," Wang said.
The Southside building originally was constructed as an Armour meat-packing plant. It was converted into a restaurant in 1985, the Southside Grill, which was a pioneer business in the revitalization of the Southside.
The building was upgraded again in 2007 and became Niko's Southside Grill. The site also housed another former restaurant, Bella Vita, and later the nightclub, which attracted a lot of trouble.
Late in 2019, the city asked a judge to declare Coyote Jack's a public nuisance to close the club following a fatal shooting, which was the third in three years.
Police were called to the address 470 times since the club had opened its doors in January 2015, according to Chattanooga Police Department data. Ten people had been shot there since 2016.
The building had been on the market since 2020. Joe Pleva of KW Commercial represented the buyer, Walldorf said.
Contact Mike Pare at mpare@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6318. Follow him on Twitter @MikePareTFP.