The owner of the Memorial Building on Main Street have signed a new tenant for the space most recently occupied by the Harry O’s nightclub, an attorney representing the owner said on Thursday, promising that the building will be buzzing by the middle of the winter.
Joe Wrona, the Memorial Building, LLC attorney, said the new tenant will be a nightclub. He said it was not clear whether the nightclub would be ready to open by Christmas week, which is typically a busy period in Park City. It will debut, though, by the time the Sundance Film Festival starts in January, Wrona said. He declined to provide the nightclub’s name.
“The people of Park City should expect high-quality entertainment during the Sundance Film Festival,” Wrona said.
He said the nightclub will be a “first-class operation” that will offer a variety of music acts, including rock ‘n’ roll, hip hop and reggae. He said it will not resemble Harry O’s, which also booked acts from different genres.
“Memorial Building, LLC had no interest in leasing the premises in a manner that would just re-create the problems we had with the last tenant,” Wrona said.
The nightclub will be operating on a year-round basis, but Wrona said there could be periods when there are not events scheduled.
The nightclub ownership consists of a partnership between local and out-of-state figures, Wrona said, declining to identify the people involved. The nightclub signed a multiyear lease for the space, Wrona said. He refused to offer details such as the length of the lease and the price per square foot.
“We’ll see the tenants slowly improving the premises over the next couple months,” Wrona said.
The signing of a new tenant comes a little more than five months after Memorial Building, LLC evicted Harry O’s under police protection and in front of a crowd of onlookers. The former tenant, known as Athanasios III, LLC, repeatedly failed to pay its monthly rent on time for the Harry O’s space, Wrona said then. There has been a long-running legal case between the two sides, and Wrona said a state judge recently made a favorable ruling for the Memorial Building, LLC side.
The former Harry O’s square footage is the largest nightclub space on Main Street, and it occupies a high-profile spot on the 400 block of the street. There were frequently large crowds inside and outside Harry O’s during the Sundance Film Festival, when the nightclub was able to book big-name acts, but it was only open sporadically in the period before the eviction.
Harry O’s opened in the Memorial Building in 1999 and quickly created the most buzz of Park City’s nightclubs.