He ran through years of red tape, and now his South Jersey food hall has reached the finish line

Dave Welsh ran track in high school and college, and went on to open four South Jersey RunningCo stores.

Along the way, while organizing post-race parties at bars and restaurants, he realized something about runners: “Everybody goes out afterward,” Welsh, 46, said last week. “I said, ‘This is crazy. We should just have our own bar.’”

In 2018, he opened The Mile Pub & Kitchen in Runnemede.

But he’d always wanted to open something more ambitious. “If we’re always entertaining people, why not do a restaurant?” he said.

In spring 2019, he bought the former Bristow’s sporting-goods store (later an auto-parts store) on Haddon Avenue in Haddon Township, a block from his childhood home, where his parents still live. It’s also a 400-meter-or-so jog from the Westmont stop of the PATCO Speedline.

This week, Reunion Hall opens at 206 Haddon Ave., ending nearly four years of hurdles, including construction delays because of the pandemic and a zoning fight over a parking lot in the rear.

The bar-restaurant, which opens into a spacious outdoor bar beneath an electronically louvered pergola, is across the side street from a Tacconelli’s Pizzeria location that opened a year ago, and across Haddon Avenue from Haddon Towne Center, the apartment complex that opened in 2017 and whose developer sued to block Reunion Hall. Defendants Welsh and Haddon Township prevailed in the lawsuit, which is being appealed.

“The whole point is to blend the brewery and bar industries,” Welsh said, during a tour last week. “Right now, breweries are doing better than bars because they’re a little bit more laid-back and casual. People like that.”

Welsh’s travels inspired the setup, which has garage doors along the Haddon Avenue front and a food-hall feel, though it will operate as a normal restaurant. “All the different things I liked, I’d photograph and bring it back and put it on a board,” he said.

Welsh likes food trucks, since they’re often found at the end of a road race. At Reunion Hall, he built three separate kitchens, each 8 feet by 16 feet, the typical food truck’s size. He found two vintage skylights and punched holes in the roof to add natural light in the dining room.

With the main bar designed at 56 feet long, he opted for a beer system with 56 taps. Sixteen beer labels will be constant, 30 others are from New Jersey breweries, and the rest will rotate.

The interior, including the two bars, tables, and walls, is clad in reclaimed wood, from various structures along the East Coast. As a personal touch, Welsh, who graduated from Haddon Township High in 1995, encased one of his first cross-country medals in resin and embedded it into the drink rail.

Welsh has stayed local for the food. The vendors are Ashley Coyne, who owns goodbeat down the street; Joe Gentile, who owns Local Links in Haddon Heights; and Ed Strojan, a chef and culinary instructor whose family runs the English Gardener Gift Shop in Haddonfield. Welsh’s purview is the bar. Everything will be run on one tab. “You shouldn’t have to come in and pay four different times,” he said.

Although Reunion Hall resembles a beer garden, it is not self-service. Staff takes orders at the tables and picks up drinks from the bar and food from each window – fried chicken from Strojan (Chicken Joint), perhaps burgers, “East Philly” steaks, and mac and cheese from Gentile (Local Standards), or plant-based tacos and soft serve from Coyne (Poppy Taco). There will be no pizza, out of respect for Tacconelli’s, Welsh said.

Welsh said the project’s scope and budget grew during the pandemic, when restaurants created temporary seating outside in their parking lots.

“When I was designing this, I was like, ‘Well, if God forbid the industry ever gets shut down again, we need to be ready,’” he said, adding that he put almost as much thought into the adjacent outdoor space. A smaller bar faces the patio windows, which in warmer weather will be open, allowing for a seamless indoor-outdoor experience.

“When these garage doors go up, with the two sunroofs, the goal is to make it feel like you’re outside when you’re in there,” he said.

There are heaters beneath the pergola. The entire outside yard, which includes artificial turf and a double fire pit, is ringed with a wooden fence served by electrical outlets. “We’ll do a little farmer’s market to make it basically like a giant community center besides being a restaurant,” Welsh said.

The expanded concept, which involved contractors staggering their work schedules, also doubled the price tag, which Welsh now estimates at $4 million. He said he is funding it himself.

The project’s opening date kept sliding. All told, it’s now about two years behind. “Everything we have printed says, ‘Established 2023,’” Welsh said. “But technically, our anniversary will go down as New Year’s Eve 2023 because we opened up for the Eagles game.”

Initial hours are 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. Sunday to Wednesday, 11 a.m. to midnight Thursday, and 11 a.m. to 1 a.m. Friday and Saturday.