Club Looks to Turn Competition Green

Staff Writer

Chapel Hill will soon gain an addition to its nightlife -- a club named for one of the seven deadly sins.

The new nightclub, NV, is scheduled to open in late February or early March in the space formerly occupied by the Ram Triple movie theater on Rosemary Street. The theater's owner, Carmike Cinemas, closed it last fall.

NV owner and UNC alumnus Brent Lee said the club will be unlike anything else in Chapel Hill.

"Our equipment manufacturers have said we will have the top-notch club between D.C. and Atlanta," he said. "We'll have a different style of programming every night."

Lee said the club will also be the largest in Chapel Hill. The sunken dance floor will be more than 10,000 square feet in area, together with a bar area nearly as big.

NV will be members-only with four levels of membership, Lee said. A second part of the club, accessible only to higher-level members, will feature live music. "Approximately a week before we open, we'll begin selling (annual) memberships," he said. "There will a special rate for the first month."

He said the club will normally be for members 21 and older, but that on certain nights and from 2 a.m. to 3 a.m. each night, it will admit members over 18. "We're marketing more toward the northern relocation people - people that work at IBM and such, the 25- to 30-year-old crowd," Lee said.

But he said students would be welcome as well.

"We realize that by creating a top-notch club with a higher-class atmosphere, students will realize this is where they want to be," he said.

"While I was a student here, I was incredibly frustrated with the entertainment venue."

He said fraternities at Duke University have already expressed interest in renting out the club for special events.

"The word has already gotten out," he said. "We want to encourage fraternities or sororities if they're interested in booking the place. The sooner you get your name in the hat the sooner we can plan for it."

Employees of other Chapel Hill nightclubs said they are not concerned about losing business to NV.

"We don't really have a position (on NV)," said Richard Stilwell, a bartender at Hell, a popular Rosemary Street club. "I don't think it will affect our business, maybe it would even help us draw more people toward this side of town."

Lee said he thought NV would be an important addition to downtown Chapel Hill.

"We wanted the name of the club to be something people could relate to. We started thinking of the seven deadly sins," Lee said.

"We really do believe that this place will be the envy of a lot of people around here."

The City Editor can be reached

at citydesk@unc.edu.