Closing night at Avalon Boston, which will be demolished to make way for a new facility.

To the casual observer, it was just another night in Boston superclub Avalon. Big-five trance DJ Armin van Buuren was at the decks in the main room, pounding 1,400 locals with beats, via the club’s namesake EAW speaker system. A crew of nine dancers dotted the main stage, wearing white lingerie and theatrical wigs, G-stringed bottoms and bare tummies swaying to the beat. The club had brought in an additional light rig for the special jock, including eight DataFlash strobes and eight Martin Professional MAC 700 Profile spots. By the end of the evening, 30 pounds of confetti, four machines’ worth of smoke, and 400 balloons had blanketed the crowd with party precipitation.

Yet, this night was anything but ordinary. Avalon, and attached venue Axis, closed its doors for good that Sunday, September 19. Owning body the Lyons Group is planning to demolish both, and rebuild a single, more comprehensive concert venue. It’s part of a broad-scale, city-sanctioned upgrade of Fenway Park’s Landsdowne Street area, inspired by Wrigleyville, the entertainment district near Chicago’s Wrigley Field. “The demands of entertainment as you get to bigger and bigger levels of it, sometimes you just need to start over,” says co-owner John Lyons. ”And because we wanted to have a venue where we could do performances and shows that were bigger than what Avalon could comfortably hold, we needed to reinvent it.”

The legacy of Avalon as a dance venue is one of global prominence and technological advancement. The club won the first-ever “Best Superclub” Club World Award in 2003, and became known as a hub on the international DJ touring circuit. “Every big DJ has been here,” says technical director Andrew Dranetz. Extending the success of the name, Lyons opened two more Avalons within weeks of one another, Hollywood (still thriving) and New York (shuttered in 2006) in fall 2003.

The club is also the only in history to inspire, name, and serve as a testing ground for a commercially sold speaker system. In 1999, John Lyons partnered with manufacturer EAW on the Avalon Series of speakers, customized to satisfy the unique demands of dance music. With its distinctive grilles and heavy focus on bass, the system was quickly installed in large venues like Nation in D.C. and Circus in L.A., and is still a staple of new nightclub installations worldwide.

“The important work done [at Avalon] with John Lyons on the creation of the Avalon Series resulted in a paradigm-shift in dance club loudspeakers, changing the global club sound market in a very significant and lasting way,” says EAW director of marketing communications Karen Anderson.

Armin van Buuren gave Avalon a fitting farewell.

Last Dance?
The new 35,000-square-foot venue, known for now as Landsdowne Street Music Hall, could be open as early as fall 2008, and will reportedly cost $14 million and house 2,500 seats. Avalon’s current capacity is 2,100.

“Actual capacity is not really going to increase by that much,” says Lyons. “It’s more a matter of being able to handle that capacity really well. For example, when you have a band, to do it properly, you need a certain size stage, and you need a lot of height, you need a lot of dressing space, you need a lot of back-of-house space. In order to do larger catered events, you need a proper kitchen space. And a lot of the things that really are needed for a venue of that size, we’ve been sort of doing with smoke and mirrors for a long time. So we decided to really bite the bullet and just do it the right way and build a proper venue.”

The migration from mixed-use, DJ-focused venue to concert venue has left some industry insiders wondering about the future of dance superclubs, brand-name club chains, and large venues in general.

“Boston is on par with NYC in that the glory days of the superclubs are gone,” says Tom Beaulieau, co-owner of Boston private after-hours club Rise. “Smaller venues are stepping up to the plate and competing with each other, which is also a good thing.”

“I think [the closing] means that the market has proven itself to be too difficult to try to go with DJs only,” says Dranetz. “It’s really tough to fill a large room week in, week out, unless you have a top 10 DJ there. Those guys can do it, but you have 52 weekends a year. You’re not gonna have a top 10 guy in there every week.”

But, according to Lyons, a genre-shift is not central to the revamp. “Avalon has always been a place where you could have a great electronic music party with DJ,” he says. “It’s also been a great place to see a concert, and a great place to have a party. None of the formatting is likely to change. We’re just sort of building a better mousetrap.”

Lyons and his brother Patrick acquired 15 Landsdowne Street in 1978 as The Lyons Group. Through the years, the venue has had a number of different identities: First it was called 15 Landsdowne Street, then Boston-Boston, then Metro, and after that Citi, until finally it was named Avalon (after the mythical island of King Arthur’s magician, Merlin) in 1992. The club underwent an extensive renovation in 1999, including the addition of the first Avalon speaker prototypes. Most recently, the venue has acted as host to five separate clubs built into one. For a $15 cover charge, clubbers have been able to experience Avalon, Axis, I.D., Rocket Bar, and The Quarter in a single outing.

Avalon's rebirth is part of a broader, city-sanctioned upgrade of Landsdowne Street.

“Let’s Go For It”
Dranetz reports that the reaction from the Boston public to news of the closing has been “mixed. You have the people who don’t want to see anything change; the loyal patrons who show up week in, week out, who love the place. And then you have some people who say ‘OK, well, the building is old. It needs to be refreshed and revamped,’ and those people will welcome something that’s gonna be fresh and shiny.”

Lyons, though, needs no convincing outside of his own mind. “You always have second guesses, always wonder whether or not to do it,” he says. ”It’s a huge financial risk, it’s a large commitment of time, and a big chunk of your life there. We’ve been at that jumping-off point dozens of times in the past and at some moment we just decided, ‘Let’s go for it.’ So, once we decided to go for it, there was no looking back.

“I don’t really see it as a closing. Honestly, all of the best things that happen at any place are the memories, and the memories aren’t in bricks and mortar. And that’s the cycle of life: you go on to great, new stuff.”

www.avalonboston.com

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