How large does a town need to be to start a chess club?

I've been thinking about starting a chess club in my local town but I'm skeptical that it's large enough to be worth it. 

How large should a town be before starting a chess club becomes practical?

PS: My town has a population of roughly 16,000 people.

I tried to start one earlier this year, but it was a dismal failure. My town has about 9,000 people, and about 16,000 for the county. I gave it 2 months and had exactly 0 people show up .I did get several "Are you playing with yourself?" jokes and a few "That's probably more fun with a partner" comments. There were a couple people that told me they would come the next week, but they didn't. Go ahead and give it a shot, the worst that could happen is you waste a little time.

How exactly did you go about doing it?

How did you advertise?

What was the venue?

At first I tried two nights a week, one at a bar and another at a coffee shop/restaurant. I gave up on that after a couple weeks and just went with the coffee shop. I put up fliers at local businesses and had friends put it on Facebook.

If at all possible, find a buddy to help.  Two people playing chess is a much better draw than one person sitting behind a board.

I don't know if towns that size ever have Meetup (meetup.com).  In larger places that has been a successful way to start clubs.

You could also try to get a public library involved; they have some publicity resources and are often chess-friendly.

My local town has a population of about 14,000 in a county of about 20,000. There have been a couple attempts at clubs in the past 15 years or so, but there wasn't enough interest for them to keep going, even with a 4000+ enrollment university. The only clubs are in the grade schools, restricted to students of course.

EDIT: BTW, the two attempts to get clubs going were started by the local newspaper editor and the library director, who were probably as well placed as anyone to try to drum up participants.

I have four other siblings that are into chess as well so that would be a club of five people already. The only problem is that we can play chess at the house. To drive 20 minutes into town to play chess by ourselves seems like a waste of gas. If at least 2 - 3 other people joined then it would be worth it I guess. I live in a country of 48,000 so that's a good bit better than 20,000 but most likely it's still too small.

The county library would probably be the best venue. Maybe I can get in contact with the administrators and see what we can pull together.

It would definitely be an advantage to have other people besides your own family. If nothing else, with more people in the group you can share rides and gas if some of you want to drive to participate in a tournament somewhere in your state.

At least large enough to fit a chess board and 2 people.  I'd say about 10' x 10' would be sufficient.

I imagine it would be OK if White was in town and Black wasn't. (Or vice versa.)

Good point. Having a chess club would increase the likelyhood of visiting tournaments.

If you have 2 people, you have a chess club

You could try setting up an informal group on Meetup to see how much interest there is.  If nothing else, a couple of like-minded people can get together for some chess.  There isn't enough interest where I live for an actual club, but the Meetup group is fairly active and I can get some games that way.

And, if there's enough interest, start a club with that group as the core.