At Nash Keys piano bar, partners push for hope in downtown Clearwater

CLEARWATER — Another Friday night and Cleveland Street was dead. Then came the music and singing from inside The Nash Keys.

Couples on date nights, a 40th birthday party, friends who had traveled all the way from Tampa and Tarpon Springs, all filled tables in front of a pair of piano players belting out requests from the audience. Strangers sang along together — Sweet Caroline, Only the Good Die Young — and got under the rose-colored lights and danced.

Right outside, blocks of storefronts, lots and buildings, all controlled by the Church of Scientology, sat dark and empty. With no event that night in the waterfront Coachman Park, six restaurants and bars nearby served a smattering of customers as the sun went down.

With the grand opening this month of The Nash Keys dueling piano bar and restaurant at 520 Cleveland Street, co-owners Robert Cepeda and Tonatiuh Tello are attempting to use the last block of the downtown core not controlled by Scientology or local government to convince people not to give up on the area.

Businesses have come and gone on Cleveland Street, unable to survive without consistent foot traffic amid surrounding vacancies. But Cepeda and Tello have filled their block with a piano bar, cigar lounge and sports pub, hoping that the hub can be a lure for visitors to then discover the waterfront and other downtown businesses. With the unknowns of what will happen with the blocks around them controlled by Scientology, it’s a significant gamble — the partners said they’ve spent $2 million in renovations and upgrades. It’s an investment they say is based on faith in the area.

“I’m telling the people: hey, you want to see change, you want to make this not a ghost town?” Tello said. “The only way it’s going to work is if we all come down here and patronize.”

When they began their venture in 2021, the business partners didn’t know much about Scientology’s presence downtown beyond the religious buildings that make up its international spiritual headquarters.

Cepeda, a financial adviser in New York, had bought a condo on Clearwater Beach and started exploring his new part-time home. The opportunity he saw in the bones of downtown intrigued him

The city had just turned the two blocks of Cleveland Street closest to the waterfront into a pedestrian mall during the pandemic by closing them to vehicular traffic. It gave the cluster of restaurants more outdoor seating and a sense of place amid the surrounding vacancies.

But the district still needed a jolt, and Cepeda thought a dueling piano bar — like he’s seen in livelier cities like New Orleans and Orlando — could do it. He convinced Tello, his restaurateur friend from New York, to help make it happen.

“You could build a piano bar in the middle of the woods and people would come,” Cepeda said.

But since 2017, limited liability companies tied to Scientology have gradually bought at least 210 commercial properties in downtown and the nearby North Marina Area. Most still remain vacant, creating a hush over downtown. Of 25 ground-level vacancies in the four blocks of the main Cleveland Street drag closest to the water, all but one are owned by companies tied to Scientology.

Asked why the properties are vacant, Scientology spokesperson Ben Shaw responded that the church is underway on the historic restoration of three Cleveland Street buildings with space for offices, restaurants and retail. The projects, started in early 2022, represent “a greater financial investment into downtown Clearwater than the previous five decades combined by previous owners and the City,” he said in a statement.

But the church has not confirmed plans for the remaining properties sitting vacant throughout downtown. City Manager Jennifer Poirrier said she has asked church officials for a meeting to talk about activating them, but “we have not been successful in getting another meeting scheduled.”

Focused on property it controls, the city last year completed the $84 million renovation of Coachman Park that brought a 9,000 capacity amphitheater, garden, promenade, playground and green space to the waterfront.

On days with events such as concerts, the July 4th fireworks show and festivals, the park can bring thousands of visitors, many who pack the half-dozen restaurants on Cleveland Street.

The struggle is on days with nothing planned in the park, because there’s not enough businesses to draw consistent foot traffic on their own, said Dale Robinson, who took over Downtown Pizza Sports Bar and Grill in 2019.

“Hopefully with a piano bar it brings a different crowd downtown,” Robinson said. “I’m hoping it works out because right now downtown is pretty stagnant.”

Cepeda and Tello didn’t expect it would take three years to launch Nash Keys, the name a play on Nashville music. But the delay is what inspired their concept of a broader hub.

The Nash Keys storefront had been vacant for more than a decade and needed a major facelift. They installed a new kitchen, worked on the roof, upgraded the electrical system. Then came unexpected code requirements — installing a fire sprinkler system and a wheelchair accessible lift for the second level balcony they built.

They didn’t have space for a full service elevator, and Tello said it took eight months of back and forth with city building officials to learn they could install a smaller lift instead. For the fire sprinklers, they needed to dig a new water line, which added complications.

Tello became a regular at City Council meetings, urging officials to make the permitting process easier. He and his wife moved from New York to Clearwater with their infant daughter to turn the venture from a side hustle into a full-time commitment.

“I became more passionate as I started to fall in love with the community, and just believe in the dream of bringing this part of Clearwater back,” Tello said.

Assistant City Manager Michael Delk said city staff wanted Nash Keys to open just as badly, but updating old buildings can be challenging. Safety requirements, he said, “are not optional.”

While the Nash Keys development was dragging, Cepeda and Tello rented the empty storefront directly next door from their same landlord. They transformed it into Captains Cigar Lounge in February 2023. It became a passion project as they tried to create another draw to the district. They built the bar by hand with Costa Rican wood, stocked their cigar inventory with local blends and hung photos of their fathers on the wall.

A third adjacent space was available, too. They turned a former Puerto Rican restaurant into a temporary pop-up piano bar in May 2023 to start building excitement about their concept. Now that Nash Keys has opened, Cepeda and Tello are beginning to remodel the storefront they used for the pop-up into the arcade-themed Prelude Sports Bar.

The pop-up is what prompted Clearwater resident Jean Harantha to start visiting downtown a few months ago after two and a half years of living in the city.

“I generally passed through here on my way to the beach,” she said.

After coming to watch the dueling pianos, she discovered a Mexican restaurant and pizza shop on Cleveland Street, too.

Brian Sturm hadn’t been to downtown Clearwater in more than a year, knowing much of downtown was vacant. But the piano bar drew him from his home in Tarpon Springs for a night out with friends, where he sang along to Walking in Memphis and sipped a beer at the bar.

Cepeda and Tello know that their investment is a bet and nothing in downtown is certain.

Around sunset on a recent Friday, just a handful of people gathered in the cigar bar.

But a live music duo inside kept playing.