Longtime Great Scott booking manager Carl Rabin, real estate developer Jordan Warshaw of Noanet Group, and Paul Armstrong, CEO of music and technology company Redefined, have purchased the multiple buildings that make up the parcel at 1-5 Harvard Avenue. The team plans to redevelop the current buildings, including O’Brien’s Pub, into one mixed-use building that will house both venues, retail space and rental housing. They aim to break ground in late 2025.
“We’re actually creating a building that can help address two of Boston’s most pressing issues: loss of cultural identity and population decline due to a lack of housing,” Warshaw said in a recent interview.
The effort to save Great Scott began just weeks after the club’s closure was announced: In May 2020, Lavin launched a Mainvest campaign to reopen the club, which quickly raised more than $300,000 in community support.
Finding a suitable venue in Allston proved to be a much longer and more difficult process, with Lavin initially touring available spaces for lease but then pivoting to a goal of purchasing the property when Armstrong and Warshaw joined the search in 2022. With Great Scott’s long-term viability in mind, the team wanted to be both landlord and tenant to protect the club from future lease terminations.
After touring several properties that didn’t have the right size or layout for a music venue, the trio toured O’Brien’s Pub and the now-closed Stingray Body Art on the Allston block. They quickly realized that this space could not only be a home for Great Scott, but also potentially preserve O’Brien’s. The intimate 75-person venue has become a popular gateway into the local music community for emerging artists. Both clubs were formerly The late Frank Stenckhas helped develop these businesses into vibrant music hotspots, and by bringing them together under one roof, the sister venues will come together for the first time.
Ben Stass
“The building was going to be sold anyway,” Lavin said, “and if someone bought it, it most likely wasn’t for the continued existence of the O’Brien family.”
The trio plans to negotiate and close the sale and purchase agreement for 1-5 Harvard Avenue in October 2023, with the handover planned to be completed in August 2024. To complement the properties, they have also closed the sale and purchase agreements for 390 Cambridge Avenue and 11-17 Harvard Avenue (currently home to Mad Oak Studios, a residential building and Scissor Sound Hair Salon, respectively), with the handover date subject to permitting and financing.
The redeveloped O’Brien’s Pub will remain a 75-person club, while Great Scott’s capacity will increase from 240 to 300. Warshaw says the new location will strive to maintain the gritty, industrial feel of the original venue, but the slightly larger footprint will allow for more space for changing rooms, showers and storing artists’ equipment. “It’s going to be a real treat to be able to get changed without having to send Sufjan Stevens to the men’s room,” Rabin said with a laugh.
The funds raised through Lavin’s MainVest campaign will go towards equipping Great Scott with a stage, sound system, lighting, bar and other facilities.
The partners hope the new dual-stage building will help alleviate a weakened music scene in the greater Boston area, where small, independent clubs like Great Scott, Thunder Road and ONCE Ballroom have closed during the pandemic. A lack of venues that can accommodate 200 to 400 people has reduced opportunities for up-and-coming musicians to perform, leading many locals to book shows outside the city, such as in Lowell or Brooklyn, or host shows from home.
“If we want to help the Boston music scene, we need to start with the first step, and for a lot of bands, the first step is a 75- to 100-person venue – O’Brien’s,” Armstrong said. “We want to get as many artists into the space as possible and be a place where they can have their first sold-out show. And guess what? Six months from now, 12 months from now, we’re signing up to play Great Scott again.”
Warshaw said apartments above both venues would add rental housing to the neighborhood and improve the economic viability of the project.
“Small clubs like this all over the country are going out of business because it’s too tough financially,” he said. “It may be difficult to bootstrap these clubs, but when you spread all of your fixed costs, land costs, legal fees, permit fees, etc. over into a multi-storey, multi-use building, the cost of the club building is less than what it would cost to run a standalone club.”
As for whether Great Scot’s green awning could be brought back to usher in a long-awaited new era, Armstrong said it was “not impossible”.
