[URBAN NOTE] "Fly Nightclub to close after WorldPride"

[rfmcdonald]

I learned last night via Xtra!'s Rob Salerno that the nightclub Fly (official website, Yelp), famous beyond Toronto as the model for the nightclub Babylon in the American version of Queer as Folk, will be closing down at the end of WorldPride on the 30th of June.

Another gay dance club will close its doors for good after one last big bash during WorldPride. Fly owner Keir MacRae broke the news to his employees over the weekend that the club he’s operated for 15 years on Gloucester Street will shut down when his current lease expires June 30.

The adjacent resto-bar Fire on the East Side, also owned by MacRae, has already closed and is operating only for private functions.

The building Fly and Fire on the East Side are located in has been approved for redevelopment as a 29-storey condo, although developers have not announced plans to begin construction. MacRae says the landlord offered him the option of renewing his lease but demanded a large rent increase for anything more than a short-term extension. MacRae says that keeping the club going just a year at a time doesn’t make sense.

“It’s never been a fly-by-night operation. We plan our events months ahead. The numbers and the terms that they wanted didn’t make sense.”

[. . .]

“It’s a great place and central; I hope someone takes it over,” he says. “It really depends on whether the landlord wants to come to a deal with someone. The space is there, the liquor licence is there, it has a dancefloor. There’s nothing like it in downtown Toronto.”

blogTO's Derek Flack emphasizes the extent to which this closure, as well of that of Zippers on Carlton, is the product of pressure to build condos.