Sand volleyball. Photography by Miguel Tieirlinck via Unsplash.
Sandbar Cantina & Grill is closing this week, but a new concept is planned for the property.
The restaurant and bar with sand volleyball courts opened in 2012 on South Second Avenue near Deep Ellum.
May 26 will be Sandbar’s last day, the business announced on social media earlier this month. The lease was up and could not be renewed, Mike Morgan, one of Sandbar’s owners, confirmed to the Advocate.
“It’s been a fun ride,” he said.
The spot on Second Avenue was chosen because it was close to Downtown, Morgan said. When it opened, only a handful of businesses were in the area.
Sand volleyball leagues have been sold out since the beginning, but the business shut down for several months because of the COVID-19 pandemic and wasn’t able to recover, Morgan said.
“It’s kind of heartbreaking to close the doors at that location and everything just because of the amount of people that have come out and talked to us about being there the day we opened and have come every day since and have met their wives and husbands there,” Morgan said. “It’s always been their happy place when stuff in their life was tough. Hearing those stories, it kind of takes you back a little bit.”
A new concept called Goodsurf will open at the location, 317 S. Second Ave.
It will be a restaurant and bar with a Citywave stationary deep-water wave producer. The Citywave surfing system creates nonstop waves up to six feet — deep enough so that surfers can use full-size boards, but shallow enough so that if surfers fall, they can just stand up and walk out.
Lakewood resident Zach Shor, who owns Goodsurf and Citywave’s North American arm with business partners, said he was skeptical of surfing as a consumer activity before he tried Citywave. But after 30 minutes surfing with Citywave technology, he was hooked.
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“I felt like Kelly Slater,” he said.
At Goodsurf, customers will be able to eat, drink, surf and watch people surf. Check back with the Advocate for more details on the concept.
Though Sandbar is closing, Shor said he and his business partners hope to keep some of the sand volleyball courts. Shor is a lifelong volleyball player, and he’s been playing at Sandbar for years, he said.
“That community means a lot to me. I know it means a lot to Deep Ellum. It means a lot to East Dallas,” Shor said. “We don’t want to just be another developer coming in and pave paradise, put up a parking lot.”
