From Carpet Mills to Cigar Bars: David Holt on Building Cartersville's 'Upper End' East End

David Holt sat down across from host Logan Lewis at 216 Coworking—the very office space he built and where Your Morning Drive now calls home—with a canned gin gimlet in hand and thirty-plus years of business history to unpack. Holt is a Chattanooga native who came to Cartersville by way of a textiles degree from NC State, the carpet industry, and a nylon recycling company that became one of the largest in the world. Today his name is attached to Largo's, Drowned Valley Brewing, Outpost, East End Social Club, Bartow Fence, Cartersville Fence, Bartow Roofing, and the coworking space itself. None of those businesses look alike, and that, it turns out, is exactly the point.

From Textiles to Nylon: The Long Road to Cartersville

Holt's path started far from restaurants and cigar lounges. After NC State, he spent five years as a technical engineer at Allied Chemical (now Honeywell), then moved into the carpet business, running sales, operations, and manufacturing for Mojasco, "a precursor of what Mohawk is today." He later owned his own carpet mill for five years before selling to Mohawk. From there he partnered with the late Bud Shaw to start ATR, a company built to recycle post-industrial nylon in Cartersville. "At one time we were probably the largest nylon recycler in the world," Holt said—before selling that business too and, years later, coming out of retirement for a five-year stint helping Mohawk's builder division grow "from about 450 million to about 950 million in four years."

Why Largo's Exists: "A Good Place to Lose Money"

Largo's, Holt's farm-to-table restaurant that just passed 1,000 five-star reviews, came from a simple frustration: there wasn't a restaurant in Cartersville he actually wanted to eat at. "I said, I'm going to build a higher end restaurant. If nobody comes, at least we'll have a good place to lose money," Holt said. The kitchen flies in lamb from New Zealand, cuts steaks from whole tenderloins, and keeps fresh oysters from different parts of the country on hand nightly. Holt credits chef Steven Goodman and general manager Juliet—who he says has "a photographic memory" of every regular who's sat at her bar—with finally getting the formula right after what he called plenty of wrong decisions along the way.

Building the East End: From Oyster Bar Dream to Cigar Bar Reality

The building that now houses East End Social Club started as a defensive purchase—an old Volkswagen repair shop Holt bought mostly to protect Largo's from whatever might move in next door and to gain extra parking. His original plan was a casual, roll-up-door seafood shack modeled on a beach town. "Cartersville was not big enough to support that," he admitted. The space became a Game of Thrones-themed axe-throwing venue instead, which did well before slowing down, at which point Holt's friends pushed for something else entirely: a speakeasy. "We need someplace we can smoke cigars. We need someplace we can get away," Holt recalled them saying. That became East End Social Club—a 1,000-square-foot cigar lounge with a walk-in humidor, a golf simulator, an axe-throwing lane, and food delivered straight from Largo's kitchen next door. Drowned Valley Brewing, the first business on the block, came about the same organic way: two home brewers with a great idea and no money to build it. Holt became the banker, and head brewer JD has since won two World Beer Cup awards—"basically an Oscar in the beer world," Holt said.

216 Coworking: No Attendant, 16 Cameras, and a 14-Foot Waterfall

216 Coworking, where the episode was recorded, was built to give Cartersville something Holt felt it lacked entirely: "triple Class A" office space. The building runs on an honor system—free coffee and tea, three gigs of Wi-Fi, and 16 security cameras so anyone working alone at night can check who's around before walking to their car. A backup generator covers the whole building, and the centerpiece is a 14-foot sandblasted granite waterfall, hand-carved by a local monument shop after Holt asked for something that looked "like a river turned sideways." Holt personally approves every tenant who moves in. He also pointed to Taylor Morrison's roughly 1,200-unit Esplanade development coming to the Etowah River as a sign of where he thinks Cartersville is headed next.

Terminal Velocity: The Humbling Lesson Behind the Fence Companies

Holt didn't dodge the obvious question about running businesses that share almost nothing in common. His answer centered on what he calls "terminal velocity"—the ceiling entrepreneurs hit when they personally are the business and haven't built systems to scale past themselves. He described realizing this the hard way after acquiring the long-running Cartersville Fence and comparing it to his own, older Bartow Fence: "We started criticizing ourselves and we said, my God, we are pathetic... had we started with our initial plan and not pivoted, we would have crashed." The fence business now runs on iPad-based property scans that generate a full quote in seconds, and it's run day-to-day by Holt's daughter, who left a marketing career running Definition Six's New York and Atlanta offices to take majority ownership and rebuild the company.

What Actually Drives Him: Watching Other People Win

Asked what gets him out of bed after decades of already-successful ventures, Holt didn't mention money at all. "It's about people's successes, about people being victorious," he said. "It's not about me winning because I don't win anymore... it's about everybody else winning." The closing rapid-fire questions rounded out the picture: Sound of Music as his all-time favorite movie, a dream festival lineup of Elvis, George Strait, and Kelly Clarkson, onion rings and fresh oysters as his go-to appetizers, and an admitted tendency to cry at just about anything sentimental—a trait he and Logan bonded over almost as much as the cocktails they were sipping.

Listen to the Full Conversation

There's a lot more in the full episode, including David's unfiltered takes on Cartersville's long-term planning, the fight to get a CSX quiet zone downtown, and why he still works 60 hours a week in retirement. Catch the full conversation with David Holt on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube, and be sure to follow Your Morning Drive so you never miss an episode.