{"id":2495826,"date":"2026-07-10T00:48:15","date_gmt":"2026-07-10T00:48:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2495826"},"modified":"2026-07-10T00:48:15","modified_gmt":"2026-07-10T00:48:15","slug":"is-downtown-l-a-coming-back-for-clubbers-these-dance-music-vets-hope-origin-pulls-them-home","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/is-downtown-l-a-coming-back-for-clubbers-these-dance-music-vets-hope-origin-pulls-them-home\/","title":{"rendered":"Is downtown L.A. coming back for clubbers? These dance music vets hope Origin pulls them home"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Imperial Street was eerily quiet on a recent Tuesday afternoon in the Arts District. The scrim from the Lineage cold storage warehouse fire in Boyle Heights, just across the L.A. River, hung over downtown. The only pedestrians passing by one vacant dirt lot near 6th Street were a couple of teens on BMX bikes wearing smoke-blocking face masks.<\/p>\n

In a few months, this vacant lot will be a very different scene. It will soon become the outdoor patio of Origin, an ambitious new indoor-outdoor nightclub and live music venue from two veteran promoters in L.A.\u2019s underground electronic scene. The pair hope to turn the property at the foot of the 6th Street Bridge into a beacon of club music in a once-bustling, lately-beleaguered neighborhood.<\/p>\n

Electronic music helped entice fans into downtown\u2019s revitalization in the 2000s. Given Central City\u2019s post-pandemic troubles, amid a boom in dance music across culture more broadly, Origin\u2019s founders hope the scene can do it again.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople will be like, \u2018I don\u2019t go to downtown anymore, it\u2019s so sketchy now, my car got broken into last time and I feel weird letting a girl walk to a car by herself.\u2019 I think some of that deters people from coming to downtown even if you have a cool place and a cool party,\u201d Origin\u2019s co-founder Roni Mehrabian said.<\/p>\n

A thriving new music venue in the heart of the Arts District \u201cwould revitalize business and foot traffic and people going out,\u201d he added. \u201cIt would be one thing that would actually translate into people feeling OK here again.\u201d<\/p>\n

Origin\u2019s building will be familiar to L.A. ravers. The former Lot 613 was a semi-permanent pop-up music venue used by various promoters over the years. Its neighborhood is both bougie (walking distance to SoHo Warehouse, Dover Street Market and Girl & the Goat) and gritty. The new 6th Street Bridge, hailed as a civic landmark just steps away, was promptly stripped of its wiring by vandals and now sits pitch black at night<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cDowntown Los Angeles is one of the city\u2019s most important economic and cultural centers, but there\u2019s no question that the post-COVID years have been difficult for its small businesses, hospitality workers, restaurants, bars, venues and cultural institutions,\u201d said City Councilmember Ysabel Jurado, who represents downtown Los Angeles. Jurado recently created a Downtown L.A. public safety and hospitality task force, and introduced a motion to explore dedicated \u201cEntertainment Zones\u201d in downtown that would make it easier for nightlife and cultural venues to open and operate \u201cin a way that is safe, structured, locally controlled, and responsive to community priorities.\u201d<\/p>\n

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A rendering of the patio of the nightclub Origin, set to open in downtown L.A.\u2019s Arts District in late summer 2026. <\/p>\n

(Origin Los Angeles)<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/figure><\/div>\n

Downtown has seen a few bright spots on the venue map, with newly-opened Pacific Electric <\/a>in Chinatown and a revamped Bar Franca<\/a> in the Historic Core. But with the dwindling of the much-loved Resident, there are just a few places <\/a>nearby to see music or go dancing in the Arts District other than roving warehouse parties. <\/p>\n

For Mehrabian and Cyril Bitar, the founder of the long-running Minimal Effort party, the chance came when Lot 613\u2019s owners approached them about building out a full club and concert venue in the space once used for one-off shows and film shoots.<\/p>\n

Mehrabian recalled seeing acts like Tale Of Us and Solomun at Lot 613 in their early days. (\u201cThere was a nostalgic feeling, thinking of those old shows with people that are now playing Coachella,\u201d he said.) In a time when acts like Fred Again.. and John Summit are Gen Z fixtures and the underground is bustling with invention, the genre interest was primed.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve been doing events for 20 years in L.A., and when this opportunity came, we immediately jumped on it,\u201d Bitar said. \u201cI think the scene is booming right now with a lot of really good talent. Ten-plus years ago, when I first moved here to L.A., I felt like my generation coming up was not as educated with music as it is now. Now all these young kids, they know what\u2019s coming up.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a market for smaller stuff, because people don\u2019t want to necessarily go to 10,000-person shows,\u201d Mehrabian added. \u201cIt comes back down to knowing your audience, where it\u2019s not driven by the fact that you have Fred Again.. performing. It\u2019s a place where it\u2019s familiar and everyone knows each other.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\"Promoters <\/picture>\n
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Promoters Cyril Bitar, left, and Roni Mehrabian at Origin. <\/p>\n

(Ariana Drehsler \/ For The Times)<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/figure><\/div>\n

The venue is very much under construction at the moment \u2014 what had been Lot 613 is a gutted shell and a dirt lot. But under the design direction of Marc Dizon, who helmed the late Brooklyn Mirage in New York as well as Spotlight in Hollywood <\/a>and Hakkasan in Las Vegas \u2014 Origin hopes to preserve the moody urban warehouse vibe, with a top-flight sound system and a sprawling open-air patio for DJ and band performances. (Bitar said \u201cBlade Runner\u201d was a natural mood board for the decayed-futurism vibe.)<\/p>\n

There\u2019s isn\u2019t much real estate in L.A. where you could easily build a roughly 1,000-capacity club where daytime community and art events can seamlessly shift into an Afro-house evening party outside, with a hard rave bill with DJs Ross From Friends or Chaos in the CBD come nightfall.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy number one thing was the patio. When we first understood how flexible we are here, we knew there isn\u2019t any venue in L.A. that is modular like this, where we can do a show in the daytime and then right at 11, have another complete show inside,\u201d Bitar said.<\/p>\n

They plan to do the booking in house, to add a dance music option in downtown that isn\u2019t from the mega-promoter duopoly or an after-hours gig.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re proud to be independent,\u201d Bitar said. \u201cMost venues are ran by these big dance music conglomerates, and there\u2019s no room for smaller promoters. We want to create this environment here where, if you have something good and you believe in it, we\u2019d love to have you.\u201d<\/p>\n

Origin is a notable investment in downtown nightlife at a time when the area is on edge. The Arts District is better off than many areas there, but between generational businesses closing<\/a> and street chaos<\/a> raising fears of residents and visitors alike, the pair will have to make a case to get its core audience back downtown to go clubbing.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it\u2019s reached a climax of \u2018All right, we\u2019ve got to fix this, and we got to bring in some energy, some business, some life, some culture,\u2019\u201d Mehrabian said. \u201cIt\u2019s unfortunate what happened post-COVID. Downtown was becoming a good place to live, a lot of people wanted to move there. I had a lot of friends that were living in high-rise buildings that all eventually moved out. But I think we\u2019re at an interesting cusp where city officials, citizens, everybody is just kind of like, \u2018We\u2019ve got to fix this,\u2019 and I think we can play into that.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Promoters Roni Mehrabian, left, and Cyril Bitar at Origin. <\/p>\n

(Ariana Drehsler\/For The Times)<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/figure><\/div>\n

Origin\u2019s building has been a music venue on an industrial and retail strip in the Arts District for years, and isn\u2019t likely to see much opposition. However, in Boyle Heights, just over a darkened 6th Street Bridge, locals have mixed feelings about a plan to tax business owners<\/a> in a section between 1st and 7th streets (a popular drag for soundstages and concerts like Olivia Rodrigo\u2019s pop-up <\/a>and the dance music-centric Skyline festival) to create a Business Improvement District with private security and sanitation.<\/p>\n

\u201cVenues like Origin can be an important part of that recovery when they are responsibly run and community-minded,\u201d Jurado said. \u201cSmall music and nightlife venues create jobs, support local artists and entrepreneurs, bring people back to downtown, and help create the kind of active, walkable neighborhoods where businesses can thrive and streets feel safer in the evening. I don\u2019t see economic recovery, cultural life and public safety as competing priorities. In a healthy downtown, they reinforce each other.\u201d<\/p>\n

Downtown\u2019s troubles are well-known; what exactly to do about them is still being decided. With a huge surplus of commercial space sitting fallow in the area, the flexibility and creativity of club music might be a natural fit to repopulate the area with foot traffic and revelers.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is gonna sound like a cliche, but if you build it, they will come,\u201d Bitar said. \u201cI think a lot of people would rather come here than go to Hollywood. It will help the overall outlook on downtown because right now downtown has cool stuff, but I don\u2019t think downtown has a full club for this scene. We want to re-create downtown as a destination.\u201d<\/p>\n

The pair is eyeing late summer for a doors-open debut, with an open-air block party that will close Imperial Street for dancing. \u201cWe all want to see downtown booming,\u201d Bitar added. \u201cHopefully we can play a good part in that.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n

\u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.latimes.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Imperial Street was eerily quiet on a recent Tuesday afternoon in the Arts District. The scrim from the Lineage cold storage warehouse fire in Boyle Heights, just across the L.A. River, hung over downtown. The only pedestrians passing by one vacant dirt lot near 6th Street were a couple of teens on BMX bikes wearing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2495827,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25179],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2495826","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-music"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Is-downtown-LA-coming-back-for-clubbers-These-dance-music.com2F552Fc82Fb29acd58403aaa6c1f904f58.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2495826","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2495826"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2495826\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2495828,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2495826\/revisions\/2495828"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2495827"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2495826"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2495826"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2495826"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}