Nashville’s lodging industry has been flooded with boutique hotel after boutique hotel in recent years, most of them boasting sky-high prices, trendy rooftop bars and high-end restaurants.

But Lyon Porter and Jersey Banks are stepping way outside that box with their newest venture: a reimagined roadside motel with a dive bar, swim club and room rates starting at $150 per night.

“Most hospitality right now is so serious and so luxury. Everyone is competing for luxury,” said Porter, standing inside the once-rundown Key Motel at 1414 Dickerson Pike that he purchased last year with a group of local investors for $1.5 million. “This is a place to have fun, a place to come have a great drink, a place to stay at affordable rates.”

Opening this summer, the reimagined Dive Motel & Swim Club harkens back to the mid-20th century when roadside motels were an American icon of family travel. People would load up in their cars, drive across the country and stay in small motels along the way where they could park their cars right outside their rooms.

But motels today are often outdated, sometimes seedy and not generally considered family-friendly. As a former professional hockey player, Porter experienced this firsthand when he essentially lived in motels on the road.

“I’ve stayed in so many motels, but I’ve never been to a motel like this. There are so many motels that need a lot of love,” Porter said.

Found objects, vintage furniture and disco balls

Porter and Banks, the duo behind the popular Urban Cowboy B&B in Brooklyn, N.Y. and on East Nashville’s Woodland Street, traveled the country looking for vintage furniture, fixtures and art to decorate Dive Motel & Swim Club. Porter estimated some 90% of the motel consists of found objects, and they tried to save elements of the old motel on the site.

Design-wise, you’ll truly find it all at Dive Motel, from six different types of wood paneling and vintage vinyl wallpaper, to disco balls in all 23 rooms and restored 1950s tiling in the bathrooms. Art adorning the walls in the Dive Bar includes a 1969 velvet Playboy centerfold, 1950s John Wayne wood art and a Harley-Davidson clock from the 1990s.

“I had so much fun designing it because it wasn’t precious. My whole motto with the design here was nothing is sacred. If I liked something from the ‘50s, I bought it. We went on these crazy pickin’ trips in Round Top, Texas, and filled up 30-foot trucks,” Porter said.

Open to the public and motel guests, the Dive Bar will serve breakfast, lunch and dinner with a focus on late-night dining.

The Swim Club will also be open to guests for free and to the public with day passes and annual memberships available for sale. The 60-foot pool, hot tub and locker rooms will be open year-round. There’s a stage performance area for live music and DJs and there will be private cabanas.

“I’m excited about this project because there is literally nothing like this in Nashville,” Banks said. “It’s ridiculously hot here in the summer and there’s no pool party.”

The 23 uniquely designed rooms at Dive Motel & Swim Club run the gamut from pink unicorn themed to nautical (complete with a porthole) and jungle themed with leopard and red. But every room has one thing in common: there’s a “Party Switch” (literally a switch on the wall) connected to a disco ball and a radio station that will play music themed to either sex, drugs, rock ‘n’ roll or sleep.

The entire Dive Motel property is open only to guests 21 years and older.

Chic motel trend comes to Music City

Dive Motel & Swim Club is the first property of its kind in Nashville, but it's part of the broader motel revitalization trend sweeping the country. Hoteliers in California, Texas, Louisiana and elsewhere have turned outdated roadside inns into chic motels with quality food and beverage options.

For instance, The Drifter in New Orleans has an outdoor pool serving frozen cocktails, Japanese beers and sake. The pool hosts yoga, immersive art shows and live music, while the on-site café serves local baked goods.

For Dickerson Pike, Dive Motel & Swim Club brings new life to a street lined mostly with aging auto repair shops and small low-cost markets. The corridor has attracted some new investment recently, including boutique wood shop Good Wood, Retrograde Coffee and Shugga Hi Bakery & Café.

Meanwhile, Metro planning officials have a vision to restructure Dickerson Pike with a dense collection of modern offices, shops and multi-family housing. Plans include widened streets and added transit hubs, greenways, crosswalks, sidewalks and bike lanes. (Read more about the vision for Dickerson Pike here.)

Porter said he’s happy to play in a role in re-energizing the street.

“We’re just really excited to be a positive energy on Dickerson,” he said. "We're very committed to being a good part of the community."

Reach Lizzy Alfs at lalfs@tennessean.com or 615-726-5948 and on Twitter @lizzyalfs.

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