Wedding DJ at Pack’s Tavern in Asheville, NC

The Space

The building that now houses Pack’s Tavern went up in 1907 as the Hayes and Hopson Building, built for a local lumber supply company, with an addition following in 1912 that is now the main restaurant and bar. During Prohibition, the basement became a major moonshine distribution point, with liquor moved out through a side loading dock and an underground tunnel that ran under Eagle Street for 12 years, a piece of the building’s history that still shapes how staff talk about the place.

By 2008 the building was slated for demolition, but developer Stewart Coleman changed course after the condominium market collapsed, choosing instead to restore it and open Pack’s Tavern in 2010. The restoration brought the facade back closer to its original 1907 look and earned a Griffin Award from the Preservation Society of Asheville. Coleman died in 2012, but the building he saved now runs as a restaurant, bar, and event space with nearly 250 seats across the north bar, south bar, and covered patio.

Capacity & Layout

The private event space is the Century Room, a restored turn-of-the-century room with high ceilings, exposed wood trusses, and original brick walls looking out over Pack Square Park, seating 180 or holding 250 for a cocktail-style reception. The Parkside Patio offers a smaller option, seating 25 to 40 guests across covered and open-air sections, suited to a rehearsal dinner or a more intimate gathering.

A ceremony can be held in the Century Room itself depending on guest count, and Pack Square Park sits right next door as an outdoor option. Because the Century Room can flex between a seated dinner and a standing cocktail crowd, a couple choosing between 180 seated guests and up to 250 for a looser, mingling reception is really choosing the format of the night as much as the room.

Amenities

The tavern runs a full-service bar with more than 35 local draft beers on top of its own craft beverages, and a full kitchen handles dedicated event catering across heavy hors d’oeuvres, buffet, plated, and family-style formats. A private bridal suite is available for the wedding party, and the venue’s advanced AV capabilities, including multiple TVs, mean the room is already built to handle sound and screens rather than needing everything trucked in.

The kitchen behind Pack’s Tavern is used to volume: every Thanksgiving the staff roasts 50 turkeys, mashes 600 pounds of potatoes, and bakes 2,000 yeast rolls for an all-day buffet, the tavern’s busiest day of the year. That kind of kitchen capacity carries over to a wedding reception, where a plated or family-style dinner for a full guest list is well within what the space already handles routinely.

Location & Getting There

Pack’s Tavern sits in historic downtown Asheville, in the restored Hayes and Hopson Building, directly adjacent to Pack Square Park. There is no on-site parking, so guests use metered street parking or nearby garages, including the College Street Parking Deck, worth including in the invitation for out-of-town guests unfamiliar with downtown Asheville.

With the Century Room’s high ceilings, exposed wood trusses, and original brick walls, a DJ setting up there gets a historic room with real acoustic presence, hard surfaces that carry sound but also reflect it, calling for speaker placement that avoids overloading the brick; the smaller, partly covered Parkside Patio outside offers a more open-air alternative for cocktail hour before the party moves back inside.