Dance club, coffeehouse coming to town

A new dance club, The Inferno, is set to open March 22 at 220 S. Campbell Ave., according to Lee Black, one of the club's owners.

"We'll be doing DJ music, dancing there'll be a phenomenal light show. The light show in here will be absolutely unbelievable. Music City's installing it, and they are going all-out," Black said.

"The lighting and sound basically is going to be as top-notch as you can buy," said Kelly Norris, who's also an owner of the dance club. "There's really nothing in the area that has anything like that. The lighting itself is going to be computer-controlled, and everything's going to be robotic lights."

Black, who owns Little Glass Shack, located inside Bass Pro Shops at 1935 S. Campbell, said downtown is a good place for The Inferno.

"I love the downtown very active, very nice nightlife. The building is beautiful; people are just going to fall in love with it," he said.

Norris said the partners who own the club felt like it was needed downtown.

"You come downtown and, really, people have kind of thrown together nightclubs, which is not to say that they're terrible or anything, its just we wanted a nice place where people could go a safe place to go and wouldn't mind hanging out in for a long time," Norris said.

"I guess when it comes right down to it, all the bars start looking the same, and we wanted something different," he added.

Black said about a month after The Inferno opens, owners will open Dante's in the upper level, offering coffees and desserts from Churchill's.

"We're going to have music and dancing up there also, but it's going to be more upscale," Norris said.

Black expects a staff of about 20 will operate the dance club, and he said the hours of operation likely will be determined once the doors open for business. Eventually, Norris said, the owners may use the building's full basement for pool tables or something else, but no decision has been made yet.

Sam Freeman, president of Center City Development Co., owns the building at 220 S. Campbell Ave. He said he worked with the club's owners for about a year to get them into the location.

"I'm really pleased to see all the different investments and projects happen ... I think we're going to have one of the neatest downtowns in the country. I've always said that, but I think it's starting to take form," Freeman said.

He added that he believes Springfield is going to start seeing a lot more development activity downtown.

"Things have gotten pretty active again ... I think there was a period when several of the announced projects were, in some people's eyes, not making much progress, just because these things take longer than most of us understand," Freeman said.

Norris noted that an exact timetable for development of the upper and basement levels of the nightclub is difficult to pin down, because of the length of time it takes to secure the necessary permits.

"A lot of people have tried to come in downtown and do something nice, and they do get discouraged and you can get discouraged; you just have to keep pushing the envelope. And it's not the city's fault, they want a safe place for people to go, and that's the bottom line. We're going to great lengths to make sure it's safe and nice," Norris said.

Freeman said in the 1980s, particularly, many people who were trying to do a project downtown complained about the city being strict with its rules, but he said that's paid off.

"I guess in the long run, what we find is when you have to do a project right and really bring quality to the project, then we have something that's a long-term value," he said.