A country club on Kirkwood Highway? Big plans are afoot at a forgotten mini mall

It doesn’t look like the place for a country club. 

But the sign says otherwise. 

On a flyby stretch of Kirkwood Highway bisecting Milltown and Stanton, lined by a defunct Friendly’s and mini-malls in need of tender loving care, a full-sized billboard now greets drivers speeding by in both directions: “KIRKWOOD COUNTRY CLUB: COMING SOON!”

Justin Dougherty, the maker of that billboard, says people’s bewildered reactions are the whole idea.

“That’s exactly what I was trying to do,” Dougherty said. “I want people to say, ‘Kirkwood Country Club?’”

But if it’s a joke, the joke belies some real ambition.

As soon as January, the Kirkwood Country Club will open at the Meadowood II Shopping Center at 2610 Capitol Trail. The Country Club will be a 2,600-square-foot tavern with bar games, a stage for DJs and live music and maybe dancing, a long 23-seat bar, TVs tuned to sports, a line of themed half-moon booths and a back bar for private parties or couples on a date. 

Dougherty is majority partner of Pour House in Pike Creek and multiple locations of Cork and Barrel. He didn’t want to just call this new place a “tavern.”

He was a fan of the winking name at beachy burger haunt Dewey Beach Country Club. So he called up Dewey Beach’s owner, an old friend, to get his blessing to open his own highway-side Country Club near Newark.Dewey Beach’s owner offered his endorsement, so Dougherty was off to the races.

The decor at Kirkwood will play with the country club idea a bit, with maybe some muted greens that would probably suit Eagles fans anyway. Dougherty is even floating the idea of cutting a golf cart in half and letting people sit on each side, like some deranged scene out of Caddyshack.

But at heart, the Country club will offer a non-exclusive night out — it’ll be a place where local craft beer and tequila will share space on the menu with Miller High Life. The country club theme just adds a little fun.

“Everybody will say, ‘Honey, I’m going out to the country club,’” Dougherty said.

Bar will be part of broader renovation along Kirkwood Highway

The Kirkwood Country Club arrives as part of a wholesale renovation of the Meadowood II Shopping Center it sits in, next door to Western Family YMCA. 

Meadowood II’s owner, Middletown-based Secure Management, has begun a large-scale renovation of the shopping complex. Secure is one of multiple property owners to upgrade their businesses, along what CEO Shane Malek admits has long been a neglected stretch of Kirkwood Highway.

Delaware-born Malek, whose company manages properties from the top to bottom of the state, sees a renaissance in this unlikely stretch of road between more established commercial corridors in Prices Corner and College Square.

There’s the Astro Center across the street next to the farmer’s market, which is adding fast food, a Wawa and a revivified facade. Just east, Meadowood Shopping Center — home to Walgreens, Argilla Brewing and Taqueria Los Compadres — was early to modernize. Next to that, a large mixed-use project in a former office building may bring hundreds of new residents.

“We’re putting some love here and it’s going to be great,” Malek said. “I think this ‘middle area’ is getting ready to come back to life.”

Construction is visible at Meadowood II in early November. The strip mall is topless, bereft of signs for the restaurants that call it home. But early renderings show a brick facade and neat trim, with a row of copper awnings. The first stage of renovations will be complete by early 2024, Malek said.

At the back end of the complex, former office space that went vacant during the pandemic will become a fully automated self-storage building with 150 small units, accessible via phone app during daytime hours.

“We did a lot of homework on it,” said Malek. “And there’s a huge demand for it.”

Tavern and music venue planned as anchor for neighboring businesses

Kirkwood Country Club is the missing piece that Malek believes will tie the whole shopping center together. 

A bar that allows outside food is a perfect anchor for a shopping center already filled with fast-casual food options, Malek said: Customers could bring in tacos from Taqueria Lyly or La Camarona, a pie from Troy’s, or barbecue from Smok’d. 

It’s synergy, he said: His restaurant tenants will get new customers, and bar denizens will have a buffet of food options to choose from. Malek is also in negotiations to bring in what he calls a “national” food chain in the small space next to the Country Club.

Malek tapped Dougherty to ask whether he had an appetite to buy out the tavern license and business from longtime neighborhood Irish pub Cunningham’s, tucked away as a locals’ secret at the backside of the shopping center. Cunningham’s longtime owners are retiring from the bar trade after a couple decades in the business.

Tavern licenses, allowing alcohol service without food, are a rare and sought after commodity in Delaware: Only one can exist within any given square mile, in unincorporated areas like Stanton. 

Dougherty signed a deal to take over the license at the beginning of November, and by early 2024 Cunningham’s will close. The license will move to the bigger and flashier space occupied by the Kirkwood Country Club, fronting on Kirkwood Highway.

When he heard Dougherty’s name and concept for the forthcoming bar, he couldn’t help but laugh, Malek said.

“I mean, a country club on Kirkwood Highway?” he said. “I love it.”

Matthew Korfhage is business and development reporter in the Delaware region covering all things related to land and money: openings and closings, construction and the many corporations who call the First State home. A longtime food writer, he also tends to turn up with stories about tacos, oysters and beer. Send tips and insults to mkorfhage@gannett.com.