Nashville is getting a private members' club where the kids are on the membership too, as Carousel Club has officially been unveiled for an 86,000-square-foot, two-story building in Berry Hill, set to open in early 2028 with childcare written into the dues, free parking at the door, and a capped roster of member families chosen through an interview.
The club will run seven days a week on an all-inclusive model, with a small initiation fee, monthly dues, and a one-year commitment, and the waitlist is already open, asking families how many parents, how many kids, and how old the kids are.
Andrew and Molly Sohr, a husband and wife with three children of their own, have spent three years building the idea, and it starts from a complaint most parents will recognize: the places their kids love were never designed for adults, and the places adults love do not really welcome kids.
Carousel Club is their answer to that trade-off, what Molly Sohr calls a one-stop shop where parents and children of every age can spend a day together under one roof. Andrew Sohr, a local entrepreneur and founder, describes it as a problem hospitality has simply not caught up to, and the club as the place the two of them wish they already had.
Strategic Hospitality, the Nashville-based group, will develop and operate the club's food and beverage, and Andrew Sohr met Benjamin and Max Goldberg several years ago. The Goldbergs have been in the room since the ideation of the concept, and their role reaches well past the kitchen. Two more names are advising the launch: Olympic gymnast Shawn Johnson East and Will Guidara, the author of "Unreasonable Hospitality."
Pricing is available on request and will vary by the number of adults and children on a membership and the children's ages, every prospective member goes through an interview, and the Sohrs plan to grow slowly rather than fill the building. "I don't ever want it to be too crowded," Andrew Sohr said. "You should always be able to get a table for your family. The jungle gym should never have a line waiting for kids to do a slide. All of those things." He wants, he said, "to be very thoughtful about how we grow."
The club will take over 3040 Sidco Drive, a two-story building the Sohrs hold under a multiyear lease, and the renderings show a dark industrial exterior with a red canopy at the entrance and, inside, a green-paneled dining lounge.
Berry Hill won the site search on three practical counts: the concept needs a lot of square footage, it needs parking, which will be free, and it needs a safe area for families coming and going with children. Elsewhere in the city, Pendry Nashville is rising now at Paseo South Gulch, where Equinox is also bringing its first Tennessee club, and in Wedgewood-Houston, The Truth and Wedgewood Village are now open and a mixed-use campus is proposed around United Record Pressing.
Renovations are expected to begin in early 2027 once permits are finalized, and the Sohrs plan to eventually take the concept to other markets across the country. "It should be a place of connection," Molly Sohr said. "We're living in a world where our phones rule all, and I want this to be a place that people go, and they feel a connection, they meet new people, and they feel supported, and [it's] a place of celebration."