First Avenue reschedules more shows as ceiling reconstruction continues

First Avenue in January. Photo by Nate Ryan/MPR.

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It’s been exactly a week since a portion of First Avenue’s ceiling collapsed during a show by Theory of a Deadman, resulting in at least two minor injuries to crowd members and a swift evacuation of the entire property. Since that event, demolition crews have working around the clock to deconstruct the damage and begin to rebuild. Though the club had initially hoped to reopen its Mainroom this weekend, general manager Nate Kranz just confirmed that they won’t be ready to host any events quite yet.

“Unfortunately we got a bad review from the inspection,” Kranz said today. “We had an engineer come out and we were done with the work we expected to have to do, but they wanted to look at the rest of the ceiling, and unfortunately they didn’t like what they saw so we’re going to stay closed.”

Keeping the Mainroom dark through the weekend will involve moving Friday night’s Wicked City film premiere party to the Zaki Art Gallery (though original tickets will not be honored; refunds available here) and rescheduling the popular dance night Transmission, which is now slated to take place on September 19. The Psychedelic Furs show scheduled for Tuesday, August 25, will stay on the same date, but will be moved over to the State Theater (similar to last weekend’s Miguel show).

The Record Room will also remain closed; so far, three events have been canceled and one has been postponed until a later date.

This Sunday’s garage sale is still on track, but will be held out front on 1st Avenue between 7th and 8th Streets rather than in the garage—check out more details and find a list of vendors here.

And the Depot Tavern and 7th St. Entry both remain open; the Entry’s schedule of shows can be found here.

While I had him on the phone, I couldn’t help but ask Kranz—where on earth did they find a team of contractors to take on such a herculean task? They don’t exactly list rock club repairmen in the Yellow Pages.

“We’re always trying to get involved in whatever projects are going on, so through the work on the Palace Theater we’ve gotten to know a lot of people. Dayna had a good relationship with the people at Mortenson, and they have been so helpful. They made phone calls and got their preferred demo crew in here in a matter of hours, working around the clock. They are literally here 24 hours a day.

“And honestly, every day when we check in with these guys, they get better and better at guessing when this work will be done. I should have a definite reopening date in the next few days.”