The Knitting Factory's Jared Hoffman says the club's future is no longer in Manhattan.
For 21 years the nightclub has been a symbol of downtown New York music, gaining an international reputation for an eclectic, finger-on-the-pulse aesthetic. At the Knitting Factory's original location on East Houston Street on the Lower East Side, and at 74 Leonard Street in TriBeCa, where it moved 14 years ago, jazz has mingled with punk, avant-garde rock, hip-hop and underground sounds of all types.
But Mr. Hoffman, who took over five years ago, is betting on a plan for the future that will involve a lower local profile in Brooklyn and a big role in two cities distant from downtown New York in every way: Boise, Idaho, and Spokane, Wash.
This week the New York club, the headquarters of a company that also includes a club in Los Angeles, won community board approval to begin moving into 361 Metropolitan Avenue in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, the former site of the Luna Lounge. In TriBeCa the Knitting Factory has three performances spaces, the largest holding 400 people, but in Brooklyn it will have only one room, for 300 or fewer. Two weeks ago “Knitting Factory Concert House" signs went up outside larger halls in Boise (capacity 1,000) and Spokane (1,500) that the company recently acquired.
We don't have to be the biggest kids in New York City to be the Knitting Factory. What we do have to have is a pipeline that brings us the most exciting new music from the cities where the newest, most exciting new music is being created. The Knitting Factory has struggled to define itself ever since it lost its emphasis as a center for avant-garde jazz.
-Jared Hoffman
The survival of the Knitting Factory may depend on a big change. The Leonard Street building was recently sold, and while the club's lease runs through next July, Mr. Hoffman said it has no future in increasingly upscale TriBeCa.
