Suffolk's Main Street Jazz won’t reopen

SUFFOLK

Horace Balmer said he's received more than 900 e-mails over the past two months from people wondering the same thing:

"Are you opening back up?"

The answer is no.

After two years of enduring skeptics, Main Street Jazz in downtown Suffolk is closed for good. On Wednesday, an auctioneer will try to sell its contents, including two baby grand pianos, a Hammond organ, guitars and a line up of 3-feet-tall jazz figurines.

"They thought they were going to bring a lot of flair - big-city flair - to Suffolk," said Maurice Wilson, the restaurant's last executive chef. "That's a big gamble."

Balmer said he and his business partner, Sherwin Turner, simply decided to close the venue - but not because they weren't making money.

"My partner got tired of the business. I knew I couldn't run it by myself," said Balmer, a board member for the Suffolk Economic Development Authority. "Before you allow the business to dictate, you dictate."

Turner, however, gave a different account. He said he left Main Street Jazz after the first of the year to pursue other ventures, but he expected the jazz club to continue.

Turner, who called his departure friendly, said he learned Main Street Jazz had closed after the fact.

"Business was okay, but not booming like Granby Street (in Norfolk)," he said. "You don't get a lot of traffic during the week."

The restaurant fell behind in taxes, and the owners were working with the city to catch up, said Suffolk Treasurer Ron Williams. The business still owes $13,000 from personal property, admission and meals taxes, and the city will present a lien on the auction to collect on the debt, Williams said.

All the employees were paid in full after the restaurant closed, Wilson said.

During its run, Main Street Jazz impressed patrons with its musical talent and elegant dining experience. Balmer and Turner created the atmosphere from an old three-story building that once housed a horse carriage factory.

"There was nothing that you could compare it to (in Hampton Roads)," said Jae Sinnett, a local radio host and jazz musician who played there several times. "It was fabulous, really."

So fabulous that to some it might have seemed out of place in Suffolk. Even in downtown it stood a little off the main thoroughfare - a parking lot on one side and an open lot on the other.

It may have been a psychological thing for some, the idea that downtown Suffolk was just too out of the way, Sinnett said.

"I think that was in the back of everybody's mind," Sinnett said. "Like 'What, where? Where are they going to put this place?' "

Sinnett said he saw good crowds for performances on the second floor, but the restaurant downstairs was sometimes nearly empty at 7 p.m. A jazz club the size of Main Street needs to support itself with a busy restaurant, he said.

Wilson, the chef, said the location limited the venue's ability to draw experienced workers.

He said the owners could have started hip-hop nights and drawn bigger crowds during the week, but they didn't want that.

Inside the shuttered club, waiting for the auction, is a signed, reproduced photo of former Suffolk Mayor Andy Damiani. It's a boyish, smiling, mustach ed Damiani, his right hand on an upright bass. The black-and-white photo was taken sometime during the nine years he played in a musical trio in post-World War II Europe, Trio Francois Charpin.

"I think they really had a dream to do something," Damiani said. "They even got people from further away, but just not enough of them."

Dave Forster, (757) 222-5563, dave.forster@pilotonline.com