James McClain is drumming up a new music venue in Denver’s Lincoln Park neighborhood.
McClain is turning the 18,000-square-foot warehouse at 730 N. Umatilla St. into an independent music venue. He bought the property with another investor in 2021 for $3.2 million.
“Denver is poised for a lot of substantial growth and I felt like this area had a lot of value,” McClain said. “It’s just below the Art District (on Santa Fe). It’s a hop, skip and a jump away and I thought this would be a great area to usher in some creativity into kind of a boring commercial community.”
McClain is investing roughly $2.5 million in transforming the old 1950s warehouse into an event space, although he said the building has “good bones.” The venue will have one main stage, a bar and room outside for fairs and festivals.
McClain said it will host everything from live music, disc jockeys and comedy shows to community and charity events. Ultimately, he wants it to be a community space.
“The older I get the more I realize that it’s a combined effort we all make in making our community what we want it to be,” McClain said.
McClain didn’t always plan to open a music venue. The 42-year-old Los Angeles native said he moved to Denver 10 years ago to start his sound and production company, Awaken The Night.
“We didn’t realize we’d fall in love with the community and actually put infrastructure here,” he said. “But something about this place just called to us.”
Awaken The Night did sound projects such as the Sonic Bloom festival in 2019 and Tipper Red Rocks in 2021. But, business stopped when the pandemic hit, so McClain decided to start the members-only nightclub Sugarkube.
“Denver didn’t have any after-hour opportunities for the responsible youth in the community,” he said. “We recognized that and decided we wanted to take up that mantle.”
McClain said Sugarkube, with Awaken the Night’s audio and production equipment, put on BYOB nightclub parties for its members, which were accepted by referrals only.
He decided to expand that into the full independent music and entertainment venue coming to Umatilla Street — a prime spot, in his mind, because residents aren’t around to be disturbed.
“My crew and I, we came up in the ’90s … all musicians ourselves, in bands growing up, so live music is where our hearts have always been,” McClain said.
Once the venue, which has yet to be named, opens next year, it will join The Junkyard, another music venue about one-half mile away that Live Nation operates.
This story was reported by our partner BusinessDen.
