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ENTERTAINMENT

Higher Ground moves to new location in Burlington

By Matthew C. Poitras
Norwich Guidon Staff Writer

After closing the doors on its Winooski club last April, Higher Ground is opening a new music club in South Burlington, according to one of the club’s coowners.

“We’re taking over a five-screen movie theater,” Alex Crothers said. Crothers, along with partner Kevin Statesir, owns Higher Ground. “It’s going to be in the old Merrill’s Showcase cinema building.”

Crothers said the club will be open, “sometime around Thanksgiving,” or early December.

The new club is located at 1214 Williston Road in South Burlington, less than a mile off of Exit 14E on I-89.

According to Crothers, the building will be divided into two separate clubs: a large ballroom that holds 800 to 900 people, and a smaller “listening room” that will hold 250 to 300 people.

The former Higher Ground venue held just over 500 people. Crothers said the new venue will employ close to 40 people.

While nationally known acts such as G. Love, John Mayer, Norah Jones, and Black Eyed Peas will still be brought to the club, Crothers said the smaller room will give them a chance to diversify the entertainment at the club.

“We want to start incorporating some stuff we never even touched in the old space. Things like comedy, and dance nights and stuff like that.”

On some nights, both clubs will be hosting live performances, Crothers said.

The former Higher Ground venue was forced to close because of a “massive downtown redevelopment project” taking place in downtown Winooski. The shopping center where the club was located is being torn down.

“We would have loved to stay in Winooski. We’d been there already for 6 years, and we had an amazing relationship with the city,” Crothers said.

“At the end of the day, the downtown redevelopment project is so massively large, and it’s on a timeline that just didn’t work for us.”

After considering another location in downtown Burlington, the theater was chosen and renovations begun. Crothers said he was “not at liberty to say” how much has been spent renovating the building.

“We spent a lot. Let me just say we’re sparing no expense to make it one of the great concert halls in the Northeast.”

This financial commitment is accompanied by the 30-year lease Higher Ground has on the building.

While the exact opening date and first performance at the new club is still unknown, Crothers said they have already started booking shows for December that they’re “not quite ready to unveil.”

“We’re going to be opening right as things are quieting down,” Crothers said. “The real excitement is probably going to happen once we roll over into next year.”

Jon Noyes, a frequent concert-goer from Montpelier, said there has been “a bit of a void” since the old Higher Ground closed. Memorial Auditorium and the Flynn Theatre have been the two major concert venues in the Burlington area.

“It’ll be great to get that back,” Noyes said. “I like to boogie a little bit, and you can’t really boogie at the Flynn.”

Noyes said Higher Ground also brought in “all those middle-level guys who can’t fill Memorial Auditorium.”

Jason Batdorff of Montpelier, who attended a recent Wilco concert at Memorial Auditorium that Higher Ground Productions put on, said one of his favorite concerts happened at Higher Ground.

“Wilco played Higher Ground in 1999, and it was one of the best shows of theirs I’ve seen,” Batdorf said.

Crothers said the new Higher Ground will improve upon the best aspects of the Winooski club.

“You can expect all the things that people came to love about the old Higher Ground,” Crothers said, “yet a lot better: unobstructed sight lines, amazing sound and lights, easy access, tons of free parking, right off the Interstate, hotels nearby.”

“We’re just very excited,” Crothers said. “We’re building a club that will be there for 30 years, and people are going to be excited to come to for a long, long time.

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