By Gary Newman

WesCom News Service

The Sky Box, a new sports bar and restaurant featuring 30 television showing up to 10 different sporting events at a time, is set to open next week in downtown Redmond.

The owners hope the sports bar, which will occupy the Atkinson Building, will help revitalize Redmond’s downtown. The historic building on Sixth Street, formerly occupied by Sweetwater’s Restaurant, is being renovated for the new business.

Owners Angela Jordison and Angela Harris, both Morgan Stanley stockbrokers in Bend, have traveled the country over the past 18 months talking with sports-bar owners and managers and gleaning ideas for their Redmond business.

They plan a soft opening on Sunday, Feb. 6, the week before Super Bowl.

”We’re just business women with pretty sound business heads,” said Jordison, whose husband Tim is also a partner in the business. Angela Jordison opened Sassy’s, a lottery cafe at the North Y in Redmond, a year ago to get experience. She said owning a sports bar is a long-time dream.

”All along we wanted to do something big, but we decided to tiptoe into it,” she said. ”This is more of a community thing for us, kind of family-oriented, but the bar is going to be extremely lively.”

The restaurant and sports bar will be separate sections of the establishment. The 1,500-square-foot restaurant will have five or six televisions and will seat 60. According to the owners, the restaurant will serve cuisine similar to Applebees or Chili’s, including pasta, seafood and pizza. It will be open for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

”There’s not really a place (in Redmond) where a dad and his son can come to watch a game,” said Jordison.

The 3,000-square-foot bar will seat about 80. The centerpiece will be a 10-foot-by-6-foot high-definition television screen that will sit on a wall above the end of the bar. They will be able to show all eight televised National Football League games at once on various televisions around the bar.

They concluded that they wanted a warm and active atmosphere, and a state-of-the-art audio-video system.

The longtime friends were most impressed by the cutting edge sports bars in Las Vegas. But they aren’t revealing too much.

”We have some surprises. We don’t want to give away everything,” said Jordison.

In the Redmond bar they are taking advantage of the high ceilings of the former theater.

”Decor was huge,” said Harris. ”Service is something we’re really going to be focused on. When people walk in here, we want them to leave with a good feeling.”

Initially they plan to hire a staff of 30 to 40. The restaurant will be open between 7 a.m. and 10 p.m. and the bar will open at 7 a.m. until closing.