Photo: Michael W. Bunch

Edgefield Sports Bar & Grill — the beloved, smoke-filled watering hole that has been an East Nashville staple for 25 years — will close early this summer.

Owner Charlie “Buzz” Edens, who has operated bars for 45 years, says he will not seek a new location once his lease expires. The bar opened at 921 Woodland St. in 1994.

“I’ve been operating bars for about 45 years, and I’m pretty much done,” says the 69-year-old Edens, a lifelong East Side resident.

Edens says he has enjoyed a positive relationship with his landlords, a group that includes local real estate investors McClain Towery and Elliott Kyle.

“It’s been such a good run, and I’ve had wonderful customers,” says Edens, who runs the beer-and-burger joint with about 20 employees.

Edens has a long-standing personal history with East Nashville’s old-school bar scene, having previously worked on Main Street at the long-closed Shamrock Inn. When he opened Edgefield Sports Bar & Grill in 1994, he said there was only one other such business located within a mile: the Corner Tavern, which operated within the space now home to 3 Crow Bar and, prior to that, Slow Bar.

“It was pretty slow,” he says of the days before the East Side boomed. “There were some older characters from East Nashville who visited us. It wasn’t like the millennials nowadays. I just felt like East Nashville had potential back then."

In 2015, Towery and Kyle, along with two silent business partners, created 921 Woodland Partners LLC to acquire for $1.3 million the 0.62-acre site and the building on which it sits. The entity enlisted Nashville-based Pfeffer Torode Architecture to handle the updating of the lower-level space. The design firm now operates from that space.

“Buzz is respected," says Kyle. "We had a friendly and mutual parting of the ways. Edgefield Sports Bar is a place where great memories have been made, and we want to respect the memory of the place.”

Kyle says some upgrades will be made to the Edgefield Sports Bar space, but that — given its status as an institution — the “intention going forward is to maintain the essence of the business” with any future tenant.

Kyle says the four owners will be in no rush to find a replacement tenant, as they want to be respectful of Edens and his loyal customer base.

“We certainly are not going to tear down the building or make major renovations,” he says.