Rebooted Drive Table Tennis Social Club Returns in Penobscot Building on Wednesday

The Drive Table Tennis Social Club is ready to reopen Wednesday following a two-month closure for remodeling. Crain’s reports that owners Diallo Smith and Roderick Hardamon invested more than $200,000 and closed the lounge and game room in July and August for renovations of the 4,000-square-foot space that sits on the ground level of the Penobscot Building downtown.

The lounge now offers more flexibility in its private party offerings. Instead of having to book the whole place for events, the space was redesigned by Detroit-based Deep Drama Design and has been requipped with individual suites between 250 and 1,800 square feet to accomodate smaller groups. As for food, sandwiches and local craft beers from Griffin Claw Brewing Co., Motor City Brewing Works and Dragonmead Microbrewery are all available.

Drive Table Tennis Social Club arrived in the Penobscot in 2014 at a time when not much in the way of group play was available downtown. Since then, Denver-based Punch Bowl Social brought bowling, darts and other games to Broadway and more recently, boozy, throwback-inspired arcade bars like Ready Player One and Brooklyn-based Barcade are both on their way to opening — all tapping into the inner gamer in all of us.

• Revamped Drive Table Tennis Social Club Set to Reopen Wednesday [Crain’s]