Aztec
02-11-2006, 06:35 PM
In Toronto that is...
he will be opening a new mega club, 5000 person capacity
Having worked in the offices of Limelight and tunnel for a long time and sitting next to Peter and his wife every day for almost 2 years, I can def say if anyone can pull it off it is him. But times have changed and I dont think a club that size can survive anymore...especially in a market like Toronto.
But time will tell I guess...
Curious to know Henrys thoughts on this as well since he spent a lot of time with the Gatiens like me.
Article below:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20060211.GATIEN11/TPStory/?query=
The return of the king
From binoculars above the dancefloor to DJ booths in the bathrooms, the former emperor of New York nightlife reveals his comeback plans for Toronto's clubland
JOHN TURNER
Special to The Globe and Mail
Celebrity in New York is measured in a lot of ways. But to those who keep track, a couple of sentences in the New York Post's Page Six gossip column is the final word on fame.
On that count alone, Peter Gatien still registers. Though New York's former king of clubland has spent the better part of the past three years living in a form of exile here in Toronto, this week Page Six was once again paying attention.
"He's ba-a-a-a-ack --" screamed the headline, "but not in the U.S." Mr. Gatien, the Wednesday item declared, is getting along just fine up here. So fine, in fact, that he is about to mount the kind of comeback that few people in New York could have expected after his clubs were shuttered and Mr. Gatien, virtually broke, was kicked out of the country in 2003 on tax-evasion charges.
"Did I get a little bit of gratification by the way it came across?" Mr. Gatien says of the coverage, leaning back on a white leather couch in his makeshift Toronto office. "Yeah."
He pauses, dragging on one of several cigarettes. "Is that what is driving me? No, I don't wake up every morning and think about it."
What he does think about every morning is his plan for Toronto. It goes something like this: a renovated club in the old Fez Batik location on Adelaide; a restaurant and club called 8 and Eight Below in the former Roxy Blu dance space on Brant Street; a resto-lounge in the old Banzai Sushi restaurant on Peter Street; a boutique hotel near the St. Lawrence Market to be opened next year.
And the crown jewel: the 40,000-square foot, 5,000-capacity, Drake-meets-the-Guvernment, there's-a-bar-in-the-washroom nightclub Circa, scheduled to open in April.
This is Peter Gatien's grand comeback as only Peter Gatien himself could have planned it.
"Toronto is ready for a large venue like this, and this will be my last one. I want it to be great," the 53 year-old says. "Circa is going to be my legacy."
By now, Mr. Gatien's story is legendary: He was the Cornwall, Ont., kid who lost an eye in a hockey accident, parlayed the insurance money into a successful hometown bar, then hustled that into clubs in Florida, Georgia and finally, and most famously, the Big Apple. At their height, his New York trinity -- Limelight, the Tunnel and the Palladium -- rivalled the legendary disco den Studio 54 in their decadence.
Then, in 1996, a party promoter with the Limelight was arrested for the murder of a drug dealer. In 1999, a kid overdosed on ecstasy inside his Tunnel club. While subsequent drug charges against Mr. Gatien, as owner of the venues, fell apart, prosecutors nabbed him for evading $1.3-million in U.S. taxes. After 45 days in jail, he was released and sent back to Canada, where, for the past three years, he has bided his time.
But it's a bit of a curious comeback, considering this is the same guy who once said he would never do another club. Who, when he arrived in Toronto, dismissed outright the possibility of opening a venue in Toronto's Richmond Street district. Who is now doing just that: opening a space smack in the middle of clubland -- in the John Street building that previously housed the mega-flop mega-club Lucid, which closed last June.
What makes Mr. Gatien think that he can succeed where others so spectacularly failed? Looking up at an escalator left over from the building's pre-Lucid days as the Playdium entertainment complex, Mr. Gatien says the club will be a multi-platform cultural space that isn't just for dancing. The plan is to bring together an eclectic, artsy crowd more likely seen at The Social than The Joker.
"You know, you can gild this place in gold, but it is the audience that makes a club," he says.
It sounds like bluster until he begins laying out his ambitious, borderline crazy, plans: Six different spaces connected by a main room that doubles as a concert hall; a bar area based on the Remote Louge in New York where tiny, table-based cameras let you play voyeur; a sauna-inspired bar that pumps smoke like steam through funnels in the ceiling; an intimate cinema lounge cordoned off from the rest of the club; a bar designed by Kid Robot, the uber-hip makers of limited edition art toys.
Binoculars will be accessible on all levels for people-watching. A three-person art department will maintain a six-week rotation of contemporary art in giant, museum-sized display cases. And, to get the live bookings right, he has hired promoter Jeff Rogers away from the Drake.
And then there will be the bathrooms: Each will be equipped with a tiny bar and a DJ booth -- an idea he cribbed from his Manhattan heyday.
"To this day," Mr. Gatien says with a smile, "people from New York still come up to me and say that some of the best nights they ever had was in those washrooms."
Still, given the type of reveller he's trying to attract, all the toilet DJs in the world would have a tough time fighting the neighborhood's reputation as a weekend haven for suburbanites. Which says nothing of the perception that the era of the mega-club of the nineties is over. But Mr. Gatien says he has heard it all before.
"Lookit," he says, lighting another cigarette, "I've been doing this since 1976 in Florida and I have been hearing since then that disco is dead and the large club is over. The only time that was probably true was in the eighties, when AIDS hit and no one knew whether they contracted it from a dirty glass or kissing or whatever."
Then there's the issue of his less-than-perfect reputation back in New York. Mr. Gatien says he has cleared the air -- by meeting with the police at 52 Division himself. "We will operate very professionally here and I want an open rapport with the local precinct," he says. "This is a large investment and the reality is that there is no money in it for us if this place is a drug-infested hole. It doesn't add to our bottom line or anything."
If Mr. Gatien sounds like he's not leaving much to chance, it's because he isn't. These days, he spends day and night at Circa, carefully overseeing the estimated $2.1-million renovation that is being bankrolled (like the other ventures) by his Toronto partners in Hingson Entertainment. Unlike Limelight or the Tunnel, he has no equity in Circa or any of the other clubs. (He will have majority equity in the boutique hotel, which Hingson will also finance.)
John Cheong, one of Hingson's two partners, calls Mr. Gatien, for lack of a better term, a "service provider." Mr. Gatien sees himself as "visionary" for the company. Mr. Cheong and Hingson have worked with Mr. Gatien for eight months now. They provide the money while Mr. Gatien is retained as the concept guy who makes it happen. (Mr. Cheong isn't deterred by Mr. Gatien's New York reputation. "It's just a bit of colour and it doesn't bother me. In fact, in this business, it can actually be a good thing.")
Mr. Gatien says not working for himself -- the first time he has had this arrangement -- puts even more pressure on him to succeed. He doesn't want the embarrassment of losing other people's money. But he insists that money is the least of his own priorities. "The truth is, my big motivation for doing any of this stuff, Circa included, is to create culture. That may sound like a joke if I was some young guy, but that is the way it has always worked for me."
Standing on the third floor of Circa, looking down at the dance floor, Mr. Gatien's bravado sounds a lot like that young kid from Cornwall. "The things you will see here will become mainstream in two years time." He points to the successful Saturday-evening DJ nights at the Guggenheim Museum in New York that have been a big inspiration.
"The motivation," Mr. Gatien says, "has to be about creating culture. If we do that right, the money will follow."
he will be opening a new mega club, 5000 person capacity
Having worked in the offices of Limelight and tunnel for a long time and sitting next to Peter and his wife every day for almost 2 years, I can def say if anyone can pull it off it is him. But times have changed and I dont think a club that size can survive anymore...especially in a market like Toronto.
But time will tell I guess...
Curious to know Henrys thoughts on this as well since he spent a lot of time with the Gatiens like me.
Article below:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20060211.GATIEN11/TPStory/?query=
The return of the king
From binoculars above the dancefloor to DJ booths in the bathrooms, the former emperor of New York nightlife reveals his comeback plans for Toronto's clubland
JOHN TURNER
Special to The Globe and Mail
Celebrity in New York is measured in a lot of ways. But to those who keep track, a couple of sentences in the New York Post's Page Six gossip column is the final word on fame.
On that count alone, Peter Gatien still registers. Though New York's former king of clubland has spent the better part of the past three years living in a form of exile here in Toronto, this week Page Six was once again paying attention.
"He's ba-a-a-a-ack --" screamed the headline, "but not in the U.S." Mr. Gatien, the Wednesday item declared, is getting along just fine up here. So fine, in fact, that he is about to mount the kind of comeback that few people in New York could have expected after his clubs were shuttered and Mr. Gatien, virtually broke, was kicked out of the country in 2003 on tax-evasion charges.
"Did I get a little bit of gratification by the way it came across?" Mr. Gatien says of the coverage, leaning back on a white leather couch in his makeshift Toronto office. "Yeah."
He pauses, dragging on one of several cigarettes. "Is that what is driving me? No, I don't wake up every morning and think about it."
What he does think about every morning is his plan for Toronto. It goes something like this: a renovated club in the old Fez Batik location on Adelaide; a restaurant and club called 8 and Eight Below in the former Roxy Blu dance space on Brant Street; a resto-lounge in the old Banzai Sushi restaurant on Peter Street; a boutique hotel near the St. Lawrence Market to be opened next year.
And the crown jewel: the 40,000-square foot, 5,000-capacity, Drake-meets-the-Guvernment, there's-a-bar-in-the-washroom nightclub Circa, scheduled to open in April.
This is Peter Gatien's grand comeback as only Peter Gatien himself could have planned it.
"Toronto is ready for a large venue like this, and this will be my last one. I want it to be great," the 53 year-old says. "Circa is going to be my legacy."
By now, Mr. Gatien's story is legendary: He was the Cornwall, Ont., kid who lost an eye in a hockey accident, parlayed the insurance money into a successful hometown bar, then hustled that into clubs in Florida, Georgia and finally, and most famously, the Big Apple. At their height, his New York trinity -- Limelight, the Tunnel and the Palladium -- rivalled the legendary disco den Studio 54 in their decadence.
Then, in 1996, a party promoter with the Limelight was arrested for the murder of a drug dealer. In 1999, a kid overdosed on ecstasy inside his Tunnel club. While subsequent drug charges against Mr. Gatien, as owner of the venues, fell apart, prosecutors nabbed him for evading $1.3-million in U.S. taxes. After 45 days in jail, he was released and sent back to Canada, where, for the past three years, he has bided his time.
But it's a bit of a curious comeback, considering this is the same guy who once said he would never do another club. Who, when he arrived in Toronto, dismissed outright the possibility of opening a venue in Toronto's Richmond Street district. Who is now doing just that: opening a space smack in the middle of clubland -- in the John Street building that previously housed the mega-flop mega-club Lucid, which closed last June.
What makes Mr. Gatien think that he can succeed where others so spectacularly failed? Looking up at an escalator left over from the building's pre-Lucid days as the Playdium entertainment complex, Mr. Gatien says the club will be a multi-platform cultural space that isn't just for dancing. The plan is to bring together an eclectic, artsy crowd more likely seen at The Social than The Joker.
"You know, you can gild this place in gold, but it is the audience that makes a club," he says.
It sounds like bluster until he begins laying out his ambitious, borderline crazy, plans: Six different spaces connected by a main room that doubles as a concert hall; a bar area based on the Remote Louge in New York where tiny, table-based cameras let you play voyeur; a sauna-inspired bar that pumps smoke like steam through funnels in the ceiling; an intimate cinema lounge cordoned off from the rest of the club; a bar designed by Kid Robot, the uber-hip makers of limited edition art toys.
Binoculars will be accessible on all levels for people-watching. A three-person art department will maintain a six-week rotation of contemporary art in giant, museum-sized display cases. And, to get the live bookings right, he has hired promoter Jeff Rogers away from the Drake.
And then there will be the bathrooms: Each will be equipped with a tiny bar and a DJ booth -- an idea he cribbed from his Manhattan heyday.
"To this day," Mr. Gatien says with a smile, "people from New York still come up to me and say that some of the best nights they ever had was in those washrooms."
Still, given the type of reveller he's trying to attract, all the toilet DJs in the world would have a tough time fighting the neighborhood's reputation as a weekend haven for suburbanites. Which says nothing of the perception that the era of the mega-club of the nineties is over. But Mr. Gatien says he has heard it all before.
"Lookit," he says, lighting another cigarette, "I've been doing this since 1976 in Florida and I have been hearing since then that disco is dead and the large club is over. The only time that was probably true was in the eighties, when AIDS hit and no one knew whether they contracted it from a dirty glass or kissing or whatever."
Then there's the issue of his less-than-perfect reputation back in New York. Mr. Gatien says he has cleared the air -- by meeting with the police at 52 Division himself. "We will operate very professionally here and I want an open rapport with the local precinct," he says. "This is a large investment and the reality is that there is no money in it for us if this place is a drug-infested hole. It doesn't add to our bottom line or anything."
If Mr. Gatien sounds like he's not leaving much to chance, it's because he isn't. These days, he spends day and night at Circa, carefully overseeing the estimated $2.1-million renovation that is being bankrolled (like the other ventures) by his Toronto partners in Hingson Entertainment. Unlike Limelight or the Tunnel, he has no equity in Circa or any of the other clubs. (He will have majority equity in the boutique hotel, which Hingson will also finance.)
John Cheong, one of Hingson's two partners, calls Mr. Gatien, for lack of a better term, a "service provider." Mr. Gatien sees himself as "visionary" for the company. Mr. Cheong and Hingson have worked with Mr. Gatien for eight months now. They provide the money while Mr. Gatien is retained as the concept guy who makes it happen. (Mr. Cheong isn't deterred by Mr. Gatien's New York reputation. "It's just a bit of colour and it doesn't bother me. In fact, in this business, it can actually be a good thing.")
Mr. Gatien says not working for himself -- the first time he has had this arrangement -- puts even more pressure on him to succeed. He doesn't want the embarrassment of losing other people's money. But he insists that money is the least of his own priorities. "The truth is, my big motivation for doing any of this stuff, Circa included, is to create culture. That may sound like a joke if I was some young guy, but that is the way it has always worked for me."
Standing on the third floor of Circa, looking down at the dance floor, Mr. Gatien's bravado sounds a lot like that young kid from Cornwall. "The things you will see here will become mainstream in two years time." He points to the successful Saturday-evening DJ nights at the Guggenheim Museum in New York that have been a big inspiration.
"The motivation," Mr. Gatien says, "has to be about creating culture. If we do that right, the money will follow."