Avant Gardner

It was a sweltering evening inside the Swinging Sixties Senior Center in Williamsburg, where the air conditioning struggled against the heat and an unusually packed crowd.  Folding chairs, far and few between, ran out quickly, leaving latecomers standing along the back walls, fanning themselves with pamphlets and meeting agendas. At the front, the microphone barely…

Pacha New York might not have much built on the empty lot it inherited from Brooklyn Mirage earlier this year, but that doesn’t appear to be of much concern to the shuttered venue’s successor on Stewart Avenue. Following a weeks-long countdown to the announcement, Pacha has revealed it will be reopening the space on June…

Before a single beam has been raised, Pacha New York is already rolling out a slate of announcements, confusing some with mixed messages while still managing to whip up blind excitement among devotees of the Ibiza-born nightlife brand. Pacha New York’s new website already declares itself “Brooklyn’s Most Iconic Nightclub”—a bit premature given the fact…

It appears the Brooklyn Mirage and its $30 million venue expansion are officially a thing of the past, razed to the ground before a single song could ever be shazamed from its dance floor. Brooklyn Magazine stopped by 140 Stewart Avenue to find the 32,000-square-foot venue completely gone. In its place, just an empty lot…

This summer, the sign outside of 140 Stewart Avenue, former residence of the now shuttered and somewhat disassembled Brooklyn Mirage, will have a new name. But even with Pacha moving in and aiming for a June opening, there are, somehow, still new details surfacing from the long, strange fall of the building’s previous tenants.   Internal…

The Brooklyn Mirage saga may have felt protracted in scope and duration (because, frankly, it was), but when the club and its parent company finally folded earlier this year, it didn’t take much time for them to clear out of their old haunts. In fact, they skipped town in such a hurry that a few…

Following months of messy and complicated court battles, Brooklyn Mirage, its bankrupt parent company Avant Gardner, and its new owner Axar Capital Management are officially out of bankruptcy court as of Thursday morning.  “I’m happy to confirm the plan,” Judge Mary Walrath said at a hearing in the Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware,…

Editor’s note: A previous version of this story incorrectly stated that FIVE Holdings had completed its purchase of Brooklyn Mirage, and its parent company Avant Gardner had finished its bankruptcy proceedings. It has been updated to reflect clarifying information from a Pacha New York rep on Axar and FIVE’s partnership in the agreement.  Pacha New…

A group of unsecured creditors for the Brooklyn Mirage is pulling its support for a bankruptcy agreement after it learned, in a Brooklyn Magazine exclusive on January 1, that Axar Capital Management had brokered a deal “under the cover of darkness” with FIVE Holdings, the parent company of nightlife brand Pacha. The plan was to sell…

After roughly three months, demolition of The Brooklyn Mirage has finally been approved and is set to start on Monday, February 2, according to Department of Buildings and Community Board records. Community Board 1, which represents East Williamsburg, where the Mirage is located, was notified on January 21 by an employee of Mirage’s parent company…

The Dubai-based holding company for the global nightlife brand Pacha is expected to enter into a deal with Axar Capital Management on Thursday to buy Avant Gardner and turn its flagship venue, Brooklyn Mirage, into Pacha New York, according to an industry source with knowledge of the agreement. The deal between Pacha’s parent company, FIVE…

Don’t look now, but we’re just days out from capping this stunningly scrambled calendar year. By the end of this week, 2025 will be but a strange, twisted, at times even kinda gorgeous, memory. But the end of the year is also our cue for a time-honored tradition here in the BKMAG newsroom: Looking back…

After a tumultuous year, by any metrics, for Brooklyn Mirage parent company Avant Gardner—which saw it file for bankruptcy and eventually sell at a bargain to Axar Capital Management, a longtime lender of the company, after its flagship venue never managed to open—the business is reportedly (very reasonably) seeking a fresh start, beginning with a…

The city wouldn’t let the Brooklyn Mirage open. Now it won’t let anyone tear it down either—at least, not just yet. On Tuesday, the city’s Department of Buildings issued objections to parent company Avant Gardner’s application for demolition, claiming it was missing documents that needed to be completed before it could be reviewed further. When…

The summer may be over, but the action is as hot as ever in the borough—especially when it comes to the touring schedules of artists actually worth seeing, as they’re now freshly unlatched from festival season and all those damn radius clauses. In fact, this fall—which technically began on September 22nd, but experientially has yet…

The show most certainly will not be going on at Brooklyn Mirage this summer (or any subsequent season, for that matter). According to Bloomberg, Avant Gardner, the venue’s parent company, officially filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy this morning, a move no one at all could have seen on the horizon. The filing, which states Avant…

Three months and a $30 million redesign later, the Brooklyn Mirage remains empty, plagued by failed safety inspections, unmet construction deadlines, and unresolved permitting woes. Now, according to DJ Nora En Pure, the venue won’t be opening at all this summer. The Swiss artist shared the news in a social media post announcing her August…

If it wasn’t clear by now, there isn’t a date left on what remains of the Brooklyn Mirage calendar that’s safe from the venue’s ongoing reopening troubles. In fact, two more weeks of shows appear to have been wiped from the schedule in just the last few days. The latest moves include the relocation of…

August 1 will mark 12 weeks since Brooklyn Mirage promised to be “100% ready” to materialize. Now, just a week and change out from hitting its third straight month since the initial reopening date, the venue’s calendar is not only getting emptier, but it appears the delays and venue changes are already creeping into next…

More than two months after its planned reopening, the Brooklyn Mirage remains shuttered. And Avant Gardner, the embattled East Williamsburg venue’s parent company, is now reportedly trying to sell the business amid ongoing financial and permitting woes. Avant Gardner’s non-executive Chairman of The Board Gary Richards, also known by his DJ alias Destructo, was overheard discussing…

Brooklyn Mirage is well on its way to scrubbing yet another month’s worth of programming from the books. After relocating a two-day Boiler Room event (now at Under The K Bridge), and pulling the plug on their four-show Black Coffee residency, the venue has now moved a pair of sold-out Excision shows to The Great…

In case you weren’t—or, more likely, have given up on—keeping count, we have officially entered week seven of waiting for Brooklyn Mirage to open its recently expanded dance floors to the public. The venue, initially slated to begin its 2025 season on May 1, has been derailed indefinitely due to a failed safety inspection, which…

After Brooklyn Mirage CEO Josh Wyatt pledged to be “100 percent” ready for a May 1 launch, the venue was forced to cancel its opening day performance from Sara Landry just hours before she took the stage. And the weekend’s not looking too promising, either. According to a Brooklyn Paper report, the Department of Buildings put three…

Josh Wyatt has seen the negative comments on Reddit. He’s watched the TikTok videos too. As the first-ever CEO of Avant Gardner, the venue and events company behind The Brooklyn Mirage, he cares deeply about what fans are saying: online, offline, anonymously or not. After a long career in hospitality, Wyatt was hired in October…