GO Magazine's 2007 Person of the Year

Paul Sundy has a grand plan to reshape nightlife: First in Springfield, then the world.

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Paul Sundy at Big Whiskey's

“In the grand scheme of things.”

It’s a line Paul Sundy says all the time, dropping it into conversation about his businesses the way a less confident person would drop “um” or “y’know”. Another way to look at it is this: Paul’s not using the clause “in the grand scheme of things” as a mere space-filler—he’s using it as a pronoun, the way you or I would use a shorter word like “it”. It’s ingrained in his vocabulary. And what is the clause substituting for? All the things Paul wants to do in Springfield—and beyond—but can’t put into words. Yet.

This year, we wrote about nothing as much as we wrote about the seemingly non-stop business activity in our fair city. We also watched, with some curiosity, as the next generation of Springfield’s social elite continued to develop, with an influential, urban-centered business class at its head. No person has better exemplified these phenomena in 2007 than Paul Sundy.

Consider this: less than a year and a half ago, Icon Nightclub, along with the Skinny Improv, Geekerz, Trolley’s, Little Tattoo parlor and a now-defunct plasma clinic, were the only consumer businesses to call Park Central East home (Riad has a Park Central Square address). Since then, the Gillioz has opened along with Tonic Ultralounge, resale boutique Zoey’s, an expanded Skinny and Big Smile Photography. Sundy has added two businesses to the mix—Fedora Social House, set to open in January, and the ultra-successful Big Whiskey’s, the casual beer and bar-food haven that has wrested downtown’s “every man” mantle from the likes of Harpo’s, Springfield Brewing Company and Patton Alley Pub. Park Central East is a thriving block in a downtown struggling to find itself long after most thought it would be over its growing pains.

All of this can be attributed, directly or indirectly, to the well-defined business strategy laid out by Paul and his business partners—upscale but accessible, affordable but not cheap. It’s a strategy that began at Icon but doesn’t end on Park Central East; Paul and friend Jay Hickman opened Parlor 88 on the south side just last summer. From there, Sundy says, he’d like to see a Parlor in every suburb in the country—“the Starbucks of lounges”, as he puts it. In truth, Paul doesn’t know where his journey ends.

The Rambling Man

Some people are “military brats”. Paul was an “education brat”, moving from place to place as his single mother got new teaching jobs. By the time Paul was a freshman in high school, his mother was teaching at tiny Marionville High School, 30 or so miles southwest of Springfield.

“It was a small town, I was the new guy,” says Paul of his years in Marionville. A self-described “average” athlete, Paul filled his time with sports, drama and band (he was a drummer), and made friends. Still, he says, fitting in was an uphill battle. “When I got out of high school I told everybody I was going to Colorado.” And he did, moving in with his aunt and helping his uncle with stage production at the University of Colorado.

After eight months, Paul had had enough of the Rockies. So he moved back to Springfield and began school at OTC, bought a house next door to his best friend from high school, and went to work at Cheddar’s restaurant on South Glenstone. He moved quickly from busboy to waiter to bartender at the popular south side eatery, which served as the foundation for the restaurant and bar success that would follow. Shortly after he turned 21, Paul picked up another gig tending bar at popular downtown nightclub The Inferno.

But the lure of the West wasn’t done with Paul just yet. When he was 22, inspired by the time he spent acting in high school, Paul sold his home, quit his job, moved away from his girlfriend, Crystal, and took everything he owned to California in a Ryder truck to try his hand at acting. “I thought I could be the Missouri guy who would do whatever it took and stick out,” he says. Although he hired a manager, Paul scored only two auditions. He tended bar at a nightclub/brewery in Carlsbad, near San Diego. Mostly, Paul says, he talked to Crystal and missed home.

It was a miscalculation, but an educational one. “California is the fakest place I’ve ever been in my entire life,” says Paul, who worked seven days a week just to pay his $1,200 rent in the Oceanside ghetto. He was even more turned off by the constant self-promotion necessary to make any kind of impression. “I could be doing that for 10 years and be no closer [to where I wanted to be].” Things got a bit better when Crystal moved to California to be with him. But by that point, he says. the writing was on the wall.

In the end, it was tools that brought him back to Springfield. While he struggled his way month-to-month in L.A., his friends were getting married, buying houses, and assembling respectable tool collections. It was a life Paul, for the second time, decided he wanted to try. He and Crystal moved back to Springfield in early 2002 and they’ve been here ever since.