Rhythm Cafe Owners to Close San Diego Site : Concerts: As partners behind the Santa Ana club pull back, another company makes plans for a new venue in Palm Springs.
While they still hope to turn the Rhythm Cafe into a national chain of concert nightclubs, the partners behind the flagship club in Santa Ana have decided to pull back for now by closing a sister club in San Diego.
Meanwhile, Rhythm Cafe’s chief competitor in Orange County has expanded his own horizons: Gary Folgner, owner of the Coach House in San Juan Capistrano, said Tuesday that his company will manage and book a new concert club in Palm Springs. The 450-capacity club, Sun Studios, will seek to duplicate the concert- and dinner-club format of the Coach House and another Folgner-owned venue, the Ventura Theatre.
Michael Feder, one of the Rhythm Cafe partners, said Tuesday that the layout and location of the Rhythm Cafe in San Diego didn’t lend itself to the sort of amenities that the unusually comfortable and well-appointed Santa Ana club location offers.
Feder said the San Diego club’s ticket sales were “better than (Santa Ana’s), percentage-wise. I don’t think that’s the issue. (But) it’s never represented what we try to do.”
The site, formerly the home of the Bacchanal and Sound FX concert clubs, had a low ceiling, Feder said, and its location northeast of San Diego’s main entertainment district wasn’t ideal for the sort of upscale, night-on-the-town clientele Rhythm Cafe is trying to reach. It also would have required extensive construction and expansion to install the kitchen and dinner service called for in the Rhythm Cafe concept.
“As it’s turned out, we do not want to settle for less than what the Rhythm Cafe model (in Santa Ana) is,” Feder said. “Rather than turn a sow’s ear into a silk purse, we want to find a place where a silk purse is at home. We want to do more (like Santa Ana), rather than a bar situation.”
Feder said the partnership, known as Musicsphere Entertainment Inc., has not given up on the San Diego market, but is seeking a building closer to downtown better suited to its dinner-club concept.
The Rhythm Cafe’s closing after a Feb. 21 concert by Strunz & Farah will leave the Belly Up Tavern in Solana Beach as the only San Diego County nightclub regularly booking national pop music talent. Feder said that the Musicsphere partners also have been talking to investors in San Jose and Denver about opening Rhythm Cafe franchises in those cities, using the 550-seat Santa Ana cafe as a prototype.
Both Rhythm Cafes opened Oct. 31. At the time, Musicsphere trumpeted the idea of being able to compete for top-name talent by offering multiple dates in separate markets. Feder said that sort of synergy didn’t materialize, and that the San Diego closing won’t have a significant impact on the Santa Ana venue’s ability to book shows.
“It doesn’t have as much to do with San Diego as we thought. This club has taken on its own life,” he said.
While Rhythm Cafe takes a step back, Folgner is about to expand his Southern California concert enterprises, despite having filed last month for a personal Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
Folgner said he has been hired to manage Sun Studios, a Palm Springs location that has operated as a television studio and is expanding its business to function as a live concert nightclub as well. Coach House talent buyer Ken Phebus will book the club.
The owner, Greg McDonald, said he approached Folgner to manage the club because “I’ve known Gary for a number of years, and looking at the Ventura Theatre and the Coach House, he’s a pretty qualified guy. Ken Phebus is an old friend of mine, and I have great faith in him.”
McDonald said his company, Sun Presentations Inc., has booked occasional rock oldies and country concerts in the Palm Springs area for about 20 years. McDonald was Rick Nelson’s personal manager at the time of the rock star’s death in 1985.
Folgner’s bankruptcy declaration was brought on by losses sustained in an ill-fated attempt to renovate and re-open the Raymond Theatre in Pasadena two years ago.
“We anticipate being out of the bankruptcy within 60 days,” Folgner said. In any case, he said, the bankruptcy won’t affect the Palm Springs concert club because he is only serving as hired manager, rather than acquiring an ownership stake. Folgner said his contract calls for him to receive 2% of the Sun Studios nightclub gross as a management fee, plus 50% of any concert profits.
“It’s a secondary market, but the area’s growing a lot,” Folgner said. “We don’t expect to do 15 to 20 shows a month like the Coach House. We figure about 10 shows. We’re going to go real middle of the road for a while, then experiment with all kinds of entertainment.” No dates have been confirmed for the new venue.
Sun Studios, at 1000 E. Tahquitz Canyon Way in central Palm Springs, will have little competition in the Coachella Valley, Folgner and McDonald said. Folgner said touring acts that currently have to make a long haul between dates in Phoenix and the West Coast may like the idea of a performing stopover in Palm Springs to break up travel.
