Philly’s third Garage bar will open beneath, yes, a garage in Center City

The Vintage Syndicate restaurant group will open its third Garage sports bar in Center City next year, but unlike the others, this one will not be set up behind roll-up garage doors.

The “garage” will be the location itself: beneath the Parkway garage at 15th and Spruce Streets, where Fox & Hound operated for 18 years before closing in summer 2021. The working name is Garage Rittenhouse.

Jason Evenchik, Josh McCullough, Terrance Leach, and Sal D’Amato — whose holdings include Time, Bar, Vintage, Heritage, the Goat Rittenhouse, and the new Starbolt — will replicate the formula used in East Passyunk (which opened in 2003 in a former auto body shop across from Geno’s Steaks at Ninth and Passyunk Avenue) and Fishtown (which opened in 2016 in the old Penn Treaty Food Market at Frankford and Girard Avenues).

They plan Skee-Ball, pinball, and billiards as entertainment, plus the requisite TV screens. For now, they are unsure if they will run the kitchen or will sublease it. Evenchik called it “a neighborhood bar that leans toward sports bar.”

This will be the largest of the Garages, clocking in at 6,500 square feet plus a large kitchen. By contrast, the East Passyunk location has about 3,000 square feet and Fishtown has 5,500 square feet. Although garage doors do not seem likely as a design item because of the existing floor-to-ceiling glass windows, they’d like to give the illusion of roll-up doors.