1 month ago
33
New York|Avant Gardner, Troubled Brooklyn Venue, Promises Security Changes in Major Renovation
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/13/nyregion/brooklyn-avant-gardner-security.html
You have a preview view of this article while we are checking your access. When we have confirmed access, the full article content will load.
The planned overhaul comes more than a year after two patrons who left the mega-club were found dead nearby.
Dec. 13, 2024Updated 2:13 p.m. ET
The new chief executive of Avant Gardner, one of Brooklyn’s largest event venues, said the company was overhauling the space and making sweeping security changes. The overhaul comes during a fraught period for the venue, including the deaths of two patrons found nearby last year.
Josh Wyatt, who was hired to lead Avant Gardner in October, announced the plans to renovate the East Williamsburg nightclub campus, which houses the Brooklyn Mirage, in a letter this week. The changes are estimated to cost at least $10 million.
“The days of being a bootstrapping, entrepreneurial, sort of underground, roving rave party — those days are over,” Mr. Wyatt said in an interview.
New lighting, cellphone towers and signage will be installed to help patrons navigate the industrial neighborhood, Mr. Wyatt said. The club will also increase the number of guest ambassadors, who are trained to use the drug overdose reversal medication Narcan and spot attendees in trouble, from a dozen to up to 24 and increase the number of private patrol vehicles. Avant Gardner will also work with ride-sharing companies on better-marked pickup and drop-off points.
The sprawling venue is part of an industrial neighborhood that can be poorly lit, has spotty cell service and is dotted with construction sites. The changes come as Avant Gardner has sought to repair relations with patrons. In recent years, there have been complaints over crowd control, a lawsuit over a failed music festival and the two deaths that chilled the nightlife scene.
Mr. Wyatt said that permits for the new cellphone towers were approved this week and that the city had installed new maps around the venue to help guests navigate the area, with plans for more. He said the venue had spent $30,000 cleaning up an area outside the venue that is popular with food trucks to make it easier to see its entrance.
