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Sports bar and grill
to open on Kapiolani

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By Russ Lynch
Star-Bulletin

A sports bar and restaurant is scheduled to open in April at 600 Kapiolani Blvd., across the street from the Columbia Inn, which closed on Friday.

The idea for the new TJ's Sports Bar & Grill was conceived months before the Columbia Inn's surprise announcement in November that it would close, said Wayne Luke, liquor licensing attorney for TJ's owner, Taisha Sugai.

The liquor license application was filed in June.

Sugai could not be reached for comment, but Luke said yesterday she plans to serve breakfast and lunch in a 95-seat bar and offer sports events on television.

While the liquor license allows live entertainment, none is planned but Sugai may choose to offer recorded music, Luke said yesterday.

TJ's will occupy an L-shaped area of about 7,200 square feet fronting Kapiolani in the ground floor of the building that is called the One Kapiolani Building. The area has been vacant since organizers of the Hawaiian Super Prix auto race moved out in October 1999 after the race was canceled.

Sugai operates the bar side of the Kabuki Kapiolani Restaurant & Lounge on the mauka side of the building. That bar will close when TJ's opens, Luke said. The Kabuki bar currently opens at 2 p.m., when the restaurant side of Kabuki closes after serving lunch.

Luke said the plans for TJ's were not related to the closing of the Columbia Inn Kapiolani.

Another bar and restaurant planned for the Kakaako area, Jameson's Seafood Grill, is scheduled to open soon at the South Street end of Restaurant Row on Ala Moana. That operation is headed by Edward C. Greene, who also owns Jameson's By The Sea in Haleiwa.