Historic Supper Club revived as cocktail arcade

Highlander Hotel owner Angela Harrington is hoping a renovated Supper Club, which opened on Thanksgiving Eve, will draw upon the space’s history and serve as a gathering place once again. First opening in Iowa City in 1967 as a restaurant and bar before adding a ballroom and two-story hotel in 1972, the Supper Club is […]

Highlander Hotel owner Angela Harrington is hoping a renovated Supper Club, which opened on Thanksgiving Eve, will draw upon the space’s history and serve as a gathering place once again. First opening in Iowa City in 1967 as a restaurant and bar before adding a ballroom and two-story hotel in 1972, the Supper Club is now open noon to midnight daily serving food and drinks. While visitors shouldn’t anticipate the hotel’s original menu returning — gone are the days of ordering African lobster tails for $7.30, chicken livers for less than a carton of eggs at Hy-Vee, a cup of turtle soup for 75 cents and a crabmeat cocktail to wash it all down — customers can help themselves to a more contemporary menu consisting of street tacos, stonefire pizzas, pasta and rice bowls, burgers, drinks from Big Grove and ReUnion Brewery, and signature cocktails.

For years, the Supper Club served as a space for larger events and community gatherings.  Now, Ms. Harrington — president and CEO of Catalyst Development, owner of Hotel Grinnell, a member on the board of directors at the Iowa Hotel and Lodging Association, and the CBJ’s 2021 Entrepreneur of the Year — has put her own spin on the space by building out a retro arcade, in addition to bringing back the bar and live music. Her arcade includes classics like skee-ball, Pac-Man, Galaga, Donkey Kong and Frogger, while incorporating games more popular today, like Dance Dance Revolution, Guitar Hero, Minecraft and Mario Kart. “Generations want to hang out together,” she said. “That’s the Highlander’s magic. We wanted an active space.”

The distinctive sunken bar, more common at the time, gives Supper Club-goers a slightly different experience than the elevated, high top bars found today. The bar needed to be restored by current ownership, as a limestone wall separated the Supper Club area into a meeting room in the '90s. But the bar was still there. “It’s not cheap to dig out a bar and all the plumbing to go with it,” she explained, noting her husband Steve did the Supper Club renovation and much of the hotel by himself. "I had to use the project's renovation budget to stay afloat during the pandemic."

Without dedicating the space as a local landmark, she said she never would’ve had the funds to relaunch the Supper Club on top of all other renovations the Highlander needed. The designation gave her local tax credits to be used for the hotel, although it only covered about 10% of the total cost. Between the bar and arcade games are dart boards and billiard tables. On the adjacent walls are shelves of record albums, where Ms. Harrington said she has occasionally let customers take a record home with them. Bands often play in the corner of the room on busy nights, she said. “I want people to connect with each other as much as the wifi,” she said.

New-look Highlander

The Supper Club was one of the last stages of a $10 million hotel renovation Ms. Harrington undertook when she purchased the hotel just 10 weeks before the pandemic. The Highlander sold to Ms. Harrington for $3 million, public records show.

By fall 2021, she said she had renovated just 48 units, plus the pool area. The pandemic caused the hotel to lose about $5 million in revenue, a catastrophic blow for a hotel in desperate need of more renovation, especially after ordering supplies right before COVID-19. “We shouldn’t have made it,” she said. The 100,000-square-feet hotel features one of the largest pools inside a hotel in the region, which is surrounded by rooms and overlooked by balcony walkways. It closes at 9 p.m. every night to cut down on noise for those who want to catch some early sleep. In addition to the Supper Club and the pool, the Highlander has a Snack Shack (where she said 50 milkshakes a weekend are sold) and a ballroom area. Next, she’d like to add hot tubs and reimagine the outdoor space. The Highlander sits on nine acres of land. Ms. Harrington also wants to continue putting a modern twist on a historically significant building. 

Famous guests such as Mickey Mantle and Arnold Palmer stayed at the Highlander in its heyday. Signatures cover a wall in a room near the front lobby proudly displaying guests from decades past. The Highlander is the only hotel in the Corridor not part of a chain, she said. Approximately 20-25 employees are on the staff. “It’s important for any market to have chain hotels, but they’re rarely doing new things in tertiary markets,” she added.