Has Churchill’s Pub played its final song? Storied Little Haiti music venue draws bidders
Buyers are lining up at the chance to buy Churchill’s Pub, the legendary music venue in Little Haiti. Some of those include developers wanting to change the site.
Several offers are on the table for the single-story popular pub at 5501 NE Second Avenue, since it landed on the market in early October for $4.6 million, owner Mallory Kauderer said. He hopes to sell by January to relieve his financial squeeze.
He declined, in an interview, to say how many offers he has thus far, but said local and out-of-state entertainment venue managers and developers want the pub. While one pool of buyers promise to keep the site as is, the other said they would convert the parking lot across from the pub into a residential or commercial building.
The new owner would have the right to build up to five stories under the zoning, higher than most of the single-family homes and commercial buildings — including the adjacent Sweat Records — nearby.
The pub remains closed since March 2020, when hundreds of businesses were forced to close when the pandemic emerged.
Little Haiti has seen a wave of new real estate projects over the past few years, including the mega-development Magic City Innovation District to, more recently, the imminent razing of Fountainhead Studios. As a result of all of the changes, residents have expressed fears of gentrification and displacement.
“No one wants to demolish Churchill’s. Everyone wants to maintain and lease it. They want to redevelop the parking lot. And it’s a good site to develop. It’s nice to have, but the pub doesn’t need it,” Kauderer said. “I’d like it to continue as a pub and get preserved. When it reopens, it’ll be different, but I hope it continues as a live music venue.”
He hired Compass Florida agents Arthur Porosoff and Joseph Phelps to find a buyer.
Given the slight chance he can land a tenant between now and the end of the year, Kauderer said he would either sell the place with a tenant or maybe refinance his debt on the property. Regardless, he said, he needs the money to pay off foreclosure lawsuits on the pub and other properties he owns in the area. He owns 20 properties across Miami through family trusts.
Developers’ interest in Churchill’s doesn’t surprise Andrea Heuson, professor at University of Miami’s Herbert Business School. Little Haiti draws developers and investors given its elevation, proximity to the urban core and Miami Beach. The area’s designation as an Opportunity Zone also makes it attractive. That ex-Trump administration initiative gives developers tax benefits in exchange to build and hold development projects in select areas, neighborhoods deemed at the time to need more economic activity.
“The whole area will continue to be interesting to developers,” Heuson said.
READ MORE: The battle over an iconic Miami bar is playing out in court, online, in the street
After Dave Daniels — a British music veteran who promoted concerts by Eric Clapton and Peter Green’s Fleetwood Mac in the 1960s — opened in Miami’s Little Haiti neighborhood in 1979, Churchill’s Pub played host to practically every genre of contemporary music: punk rock; pop; R&B; jazz; country; metal; and hardcore.
“Dave Daniels was the perfect owner,” said Rich Ulloa, founder of the local Y&T Records label that, with Ulloa’s management, helped Florida talent like The Mavericks, Mary Karlzen and For Squirrels attain major national deals in the 1990s.
Little Haiti’s single music venue cropped up at a time when most Miamian’s partied in Coconut Grove, said Paul George, resident historian at the HistoryMiami Museum.
“At the time, in these neighborhoods you had bars to rub elbows with neighbors,” George said. “It was a tough time for Miami Beach as a major tourist resort. Miami Beach had the reputation of being overpriced and dodgy. Las Vegas was coming to age and then people were flying off to the Caribbean islands. Coconut Grove was counterculture packed with University of Miami students and dive bars.”
Later in 2014, Daniels sold Churchill’s to Kauderer for $800,000.
“If these walls could talk they would scream,” Churchill’s manager in 2019, Ian Michael, told the Herald at the time of Churchill’s 40th anniversary.
Here’s what they might scream about:
The walls would scream along with The Stooges’ Iggy Pop who, as a soloist, shot a video for “Little Know it All” at Churchill’s in his adopted hometown in 2007. Country band The Mavericks, made up of Miami locals including lead singer Raul Malo, filmed their first major label video for “Hey Good Lookin’” here in 1992.
“You come down here and fit in a bill with thrash bands and do fine,” Robert Reynolds, former bassist for The Mavericks, told the Herald in 1990.
So many acts got their start inside Churchill’s grungy demimonde. As a Herald music critic wrote in 1997: “Need a sense of what Churchill’s means to the local music community? Think of it this way: If hot national shock-rock act Marilyn Manson was born in South Florida, then Churchill’s was the maternity ward.”
On Manson’s first date at Churchill’s in April 1990, under his band’s original name, Marilyn Manson and the Spooky Kids, and as support act to local rock regulars, The Goods, “Manson allegedly vomited over stage fright on the night of the show, which 21 people attended,” Miami New Times reported.
In addition to Marilyn Manson and The Mavericks, South Florida-formed musicians Nil Lara, Vesper Sparrow with Mary Karlzen, Nuclear Valdez, Holy Terrors, Day by the River, Muse, Humbert, folk duo Matthew Sabatella and Karen Feldner, Diane Ward, and many more, played Churchill’s stage before and after touring nationally.
Humbert’s gig a couple years ago at Churchill’s in which the rock band performed a cover of Lou Reed’s “Perfect Day” so captured Y&T Records’ founder Ulloa’s fancy that the music manager told frontman Ferny Coipel if the band would record the song he’d release it on his Y&T label.
The resulting single, on 45-rpm vinyl, is coming out on Ulloa’s Y&T label for Black Friday on Nov. 25, Ulloa posted on Facebook Wednesday.
“Churchill’s was never my favorite venue to see live music, but our original music scene was lucky to have it open for so many years,” Ulloa said. “I’ve seen dozens of memorable shows there, including the first time I saw The Mavericks in 1989. I also saw Amanda Green play a short set in 1996, which convinced me to work with her. I always loved seeing so many friends and artists over the years, especially the special benefit shows. As the saying goes, ‘you don’t know what you got until you lose it,’ and that certainly is the case with Churchill’s.”
Some world famous rockers also popped inside — but not always to play. Bono and his U2 bandmates reportedly watched soccer on TV at Churchill’s in 1996. After a 1989 concert at the former Miami Arena, members of R.E.M. reportedly stopped by for brews and to watch a Psycho Daisies set at the pub.
The strip club scene from the 1998 movie comedy, “There’s Something About Mary,” starring Ben Stiller and Cameron Diaz also was filmed inside Churchill’s Pub.
