Ed Masley

The Republic | azcentral.com

When Crescent Ballroom owner Charlie Levy of Stateside Presents announced an online contest for the naming of his latest downtown music venue on the corner of Fourth Avenue and Van Buren Streets last fall, hundreds upon hundreds of suggestions poured into the Stateside Facebook page.

“There were a lot of good names,” Levy says, “and a lot of stinkers.”

One suggestion really grabbed him, though.

“The Van Buren was a simple name that just kept popping up,” he says. “It was a name that everyone at Stateside thought would fit the venue. Obviously, in Phoenix, Van Buren has a lot of connotations. Historically, it was the first paved highway that connected the East Coast to California. People used to drive through Phoenix on their way across the country. It was where all the hotels were, the center of town. And then, obviously, in the more recent past, it had a different connotation.”

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Part of a downtown Phoenix resurgence

Now, of course, it’s in the middle of a huge downtown resurgence – “between the Welnick building that will be next door that Pat (Cantelme) and Jim (Kuykendall) own to obviously the Crescent Ballroom, the Praise Sanctuary Church project, ASU and all the other things that have been happening on Van Buren.”

But “the cherry on top,” Levy says, was when the Stateside crew got a good look at President Martin Van Buren and those hipster-friendly mutton chops.

“We really liked the way he looked,” Levy says. “He had a really cool, stylish look. So it was like a logo was already made for us.”

At this point, the Van Buren is set to open at some point in mid-2017, but Levy is already talking up a party to be held there on Dec. 5 – Van Buren’s birthday.

“We talked to the Martin Van Buren National Historic site about doing a big party on his birthday,” Levy says, “where if you’re sporting mutton chops, you get discounts on your drinks that night.”

The Van Buren historical site reached out to Levy.

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Birthday bash on Dec. 5

“We received an email from the Martin Van Buren National Historic site from Miss Patricia McKay in Kinderhook, N.Y., reaching out to offer her congratulations and seeing if there was any way that they could help out and be part of it. So hopefully, we’ll use that, maybe get some really cool information and some photos that we can put up. We were talking about how we can do a contest and fly people out to the residence of Martin Van Buren in Kinderhook, which would be pretty fun. I can’t wait to go. “

In the meantime, he says, they already made mugs for the office with a picture of Martin Van Buren on one side and the venue name on the other.

'We’re on schedule' for construction

The venue will be housed in a 20,000-square-foot building that was once home to the Phoenix Motor Company dealership.

“The owners of the building approached us about two years ago,” Levy told us in October. “And I think back then the timing just wasn’t right. But they came back to us about three months ago, and we revisited and decided that it was a good thing to do. We’re getting the Stateside team and the Valley Bar and Crescent gangs and Tucker (Woodbury). I can’t do a venue without Tucker. He’s our Yoda. And we’re gonna put some shows on down the road.”

Construction has been going great, Levy says. “We’re on schedule. Every day, we’re moving forward. We brought in Patch & Clark Design from Tucson. They did the design for the Valley Bar, so we brought them on as consultants to give the Van Buren a little extra love, which I’m very excited about. We can’t wait for it to be open and get some shows in there and have people open the doors. The waiting is the hardest part, as Tom Petty would say.”

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Reach the reporter at ed.masley@arizonarepublic.com or 602-444-4495.Twitter.com/EdMasley.