The Bowery’s New Branch Coming Soon to Los Angeles

Michael Swier, founder and owner of the Mercury Lounge, which opened in 1994, and the Bowery Ballroom, 1998, is about to open a new music venue on the west side… of the country!

Yes you heard it right- Swier, a non-apologetic New Yorker, has purchased a 100-year-old former silent film theater on the outskirts of downtown LA and is transforming it into the Teragram, a deluxe modern rock club which can entertain 600 people in one go. Swier’s brother Brian, an architect who helped design the New York clubs, is one of his partners on the LA venture.

Swier also started Bowery Presents, a concert company that for the past ten years has become one of the country’s largest independent promoters. The company has become a major force, not just in New York, but all the way from Maine to New Orleans. According to Pollstar, a trade publication, Bowery Presents sold 1.1 million tickets in 2014.

The LA venture, Teragram, is scheduled to open in March, 2015. The $2 million spent on renovating the old space will make it completive with such venerable Southern California hot spots as the Roxy and the Troubadour.

“I just want it to be the best-sounding room and the best experience for people coming to see the music and for how bands are treated when they get here,” Mr. Swier said. “I want to bring my reputation of how I do that in New York, and I think there is room for a place of this size and this quality in L.A.”