Patrick says that he and his co-partners (who also include Mo's/Two Boots owner Phil Hartman and Mike House, an architect whose projects include work on Santos Party House) all want to create a venue that "reflects and serves the surrounding community. No one wants this neighborhood to be this gauntlet of bars where you can get Jell-O shots. We are very happy to remove that stain [of Aces & Eights], but at the same time, no one wants more overpriced boutique restaurants."
The new space will have a ground-floor restaurant which, Patrick says, "will be the main revenue source and the main face of the business." Its menu will be seafood-based "Pacific Coast-style Mexican cuisine" (Pacific as in Jalisco, not California) and its atmosphere "casual yet fairly sophisticated as well. We envision high-quality and not bargain-base priced cuisine, but also not prices that price out the average individual."
And!
As for the performance part of the equation, Patrick stresses that "this is not an indie club, not a rock club, and certainly not a dance club." Instead, it will be purely avant-garde. "Our feeling is that it's a genre that really needs to be represented in the city," he says. "Both the Stone and Issue Project Room are great, but they're maybe more of a museum setting than we would like to be. I have a great respect for those things, but you're seeing kind of a presentation of something rather than it being a little more free form."
(DNAinfo also has more on the space here.)
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As EV Grieve first reported last Friday:
Phil Hartman bringing a 'performance venue' back to former Mo Pitkin's space
And Monday:
[Updated] Bringing 'the tradition of the old Knitting Factory and Tonic' to 34 Avenue A