The Canyon Montclair, a concert venue in Montclair Place, has abruptly closed.
The second-floor club was a satellite of The Canyon in Agoura Hills. Owner Lance Sterling used the clout of running several venues throughout Southern California to book performers such as the Bacon Brothers, Dionne Warwick, Don McLean, The English Beat and Berlin.
Peter Noone of Herman’s Hermits was a repeat act. When he played the club in 2019, he joked that when the British Invasion band got its start in Manchester, England, in the 1960s it was alway their dream to play that mall in the Inland Empire.
In a phone interview Sterling cited the rising cost of labor and a lack support from the shopping center for the close.
“They kind of shut down that half of the mall,” he said in a phone interview Tuesday.
Persistent problems included an elevator that was broken for five years. He said bands like Stix and Foreigner wouldn’t play there without easy access.
When contacted, representatives for Montclair Place had no comment on the closure. The 1.2 million-square foot shopping center is owned by the CIM Group.
News of the closure went up on the venue’s home page over the weekend and began to circulate on Facebook, where the New Jersey band Dramarama, which had been booked for Saturday, Jan. 4, advised ticketholders to contact the venue for refunds.
The Canyon Montclair had three more events on its calendar for January, which have been canceled. They were concerts by the Motels, the Pat Travers Band and a Pink Floyd tiibute called Which One’s Pink.
No information on getting refunds was included in the announcement, but instructions can be found on venue’s page at the ticket broker AXS.
AXS links to postponed concerts with dates to be determined. Artists include Freddie Jackson, Evelyn “Champagne” King” and Chito Rana$.
The Canyon Montclair was carved out of 17,500-square feet that was once the enclosed mall’s food court.
It was one of three clubs that Sterling opened in shopping centers in an attempt to bring live music to places where people were already congregating. The others were The Rose at Paseo Colorado in Pasadena and The Canyon Santa Clarita at Westfield Valencia Town Center. They are both closed.
Remaining Canyon venues include the Agoura Hills club, the Saban Theatre in Beverly Hills, Oxnard Performing Arts Center and the Redondo Beach Performing Arts Center.
“The theaters are better than the restaurants,” Sterling said. “When you double the labor, it’s not possible to make money.”
Sterling also booked concerts for the Libbey Bowl in Ojai, but in October the Ojai City Council voted to let the Canyon contract expire at the end of 2024 and enter negotiations for a four-year contract with Ojai Valley Music.
Sterling was an executive with the House of Blues of in the 1990s, and The Canyon Montclair had a similar vibe to those clubs, with flexible seating and standing room for 1,500 customers, a full-service restaurant with tables for dinner packages on one side of the stage and a full bar on the other. It was decorated with giant photos of rock stars and music memorabilia.
Wood used for the green room was salvaged from a House of Blues.
“I had the advantage of building all the House of Blues,” he said. “I can do all this stuff in my sleep,” he said during construction in late 2018.
Vince Neil of Mötley Crüe fame headlined the grand opening on April 5, 2019.
In additon to rock stars with and without the bands that made them famous, The Canyon Montclair became the home of tribute bands and Borderline Country Nights on Thursdays in honor of the Borderline Bar & Grill in Thousand Oaks, which was decimated by a mass shooting on Nov. 7, 2018.
“When we first opened up, for the first five (years) we were packed every night,” Sterling said.
But in March 2020, the novel coronavirus pandemic shut down the concert industry and indoor dining. Sterling held parking lot concerts in Montclair for a while and auctioned off his collection of autographed guitars in early 2021 to keep The Canyon going.
“Because of the pandemic, we took a $22 million hit, and we’ve been recovering from that,” Sterling told the Ojai City Council before their vote on Oct. 22.
Sterling has become the entertainment officer for the Dolby Theatre, where the Oscars ceremony will be held March. He would like to get back into shopping centers, but said the economics have changed.
“In the old days, it worked to your advantage because you bought the foot traffic. Now you are the foot traffic.”
Montclair Place has a new entertainment center that is shooting for a Jan. 22 opening. It’s called Main Event and will feature bowling, billiards, gel blasters, laser tag and games, plus dining. It will be on the lower level, next to the AMC Dine-In multiplex.
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