High-tech darts bar Flight Club to open near Union Station

This report first appeared at BusinessDen.com, a BizWest news partner.

DENVER — London-based State of Play Hospitality wants to talk about Flight Club.

The restaurant group plans to open Flight Club’s first Colorado location and sixth U.S. location at 1601 Wewatta St. in downtown Denver early next year.

And at this dart-centric bar and restaurant, rule No. 1 is to have fun, according to State of Play Hospitality President Alan Cichon, who is a University of Denver graduate.

“Denver is close to my heart personally. But we’ve seen how the city has grown, especially around Union Station and Coors Field, and we felt we would fit perfectly in that area to bring something that’s unique and high-end and enhance what’s already there,” Cichon said.

Flight Club was founded in London in 2015 by friends Steve Moore and Paul Barham, who were watching some friends play an exciting game of darts in a pub and wondered how they could add technology to the game. The duo says they hired an astrophysicist to create the dart boards in Flight Club, which track each dart, offer instant replays, and give medals to the winners.

It already has five locations in the U.S., including in Boston, Chicago and Houston, and seven in the U.K.

Flight Club’s Denver location will have 13 private dart board areas, each one around 500 square feet. Guests can play as a team, face off against each other or play games like Chutes and Ladders. Each 90-minute slot costs $12 a person.

“It’s not darts for serious dart players,” Cichon said. “It’s about getting people together.”

The restaurant will serve gourmet handheld snacks, like flatbreads, sliders and dumplings. The bar will have botanical-inspired cocktails themed after different animals, like “The White Tiger” with rum and coconut liqueur.

In February, State of Play Hospitality leased the 10,000-square-foot space, where Public School 303 and Daily Grill previously operated. The company plans a six-month build-out designed to be reminiscent of British pubs and Victorian fairgrounds.

“Denver has been on our list for a long time,” Cichon said. “We’ve been looking for two to three years, and when this opportunity came up, it was pretty much exactly where we wanted to land in the Union Station area,” Cichon said.

The London-based restaurant group plans to open three to six locations each year for the next five to seven years, Cichon said.

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