For live music lovers, Hugh’s Room was a tiny perfect venue on Roncesvalles with a name as big as the El Mocambo and even the Cobra Lounge in Chicago and the Blue Note in Greenwich Village.
It opened in 2001 and for the next 16 years featured hundreds of amazing artists. But it never made a dime and closed in 2017.
Nonetheless, its name lived on as Toronto’s serious listening room, and what happened next is as rare as it is filled with lessons for every arts group, big and small. Especially these days when all the arts are under threat from fickle funders, changing tastes, technologies, audiences, and soon, politics.
First, that same year Brian Iler and his friends put in their own money to resurrect Hugh’s Room as a non-profit organization. Over the next two years, they brought Hugh’s Room back to life. But two years later, they were still losing money, in part because of the high cost of leasing their space.
Then of course COVID hit, sealing Hugh’s Room’s fate and that of dozens of arts groups in Toronto and thousands around the world.
But the gods were watching.
It turned out that in March 2020 Hugh’s Room’s lease was up. The landlord was looking for a big rent increase which was, of course, impossible.
A few Hugh’s Room board members, including Iler and Jim Thomas who later became its President, said “What if we bought a space instead of being at the mercy of a landlord?”
You might well ask, if you can’t afford to rent, how can you ever afford to buy?
The rest of this story is rife with good luck colliding with good management.
During COVID, Hugh’s Room hosted a few online events. Not concerts, but town halls where lots of people crowded onto the tiny screen to talk about how to save their beloved venue and how to come back differently. By the time COVID ended, the new Hugh’s Room had well over 30 volunteers.
So to secure its fan base as life opened up after the pandemic, it rented space at the old Paradise Theatre on Dundas West and at the El Mocambo. The shows were fair to poorly attended, but at least they kept the name alive.
In 2021 the team spotted 296 Broadview, an old historic church between Queen and Dundas, which was on the market for $4 million. It would take blind optimism, sideways thinking and good friends to raise anything close to that.
First, Toronto councillor Paula Fletcher persuaded the City to backstop the purchase with a $2.2 million loan guarantee. She used up tons of political capital to get then-Mayor John Tory and council to approve this one-off thing.
Then a neighbourhood developer bought the air rights to the space in return for a $1.3 million mortgage. The vendor then took back a $500,000 mortgage. A church group using the space provided a $700,000 mortgage loan, and two dozen friends of Hugh’s Room purchased bonds totalling $1.3M. These loans, along with many hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations enabled Hugh’s Room to cobble together enough to buy their building in June 2023 and put on concerts once again. Along the way, they were able to secure hundreds of thousands in government grants to pay the artists, including FACTORfunding and Arts Council money.
As Hugh’s Room came back to life, it also partnered with Rosedale United Church to present some shows together, including superstar classical pianist Angela Hewitt this past December. Talk about reaching out to new and different audiences.
By 2024, Hugh’s Room had presented over 150 shows at their new venue, with artists like Jane Siberry, Jim Cuddy, Downchild Blues Band, and tons of Juno-Award-winning artists.
And…they…made…money.
They paid off one mortgage via one big anonymous donor and converted another mortgage into ‘friends’ bonds’. Best of all, they diversified their revenues: not just through higher ticket sales than projected, but through hall rentals, grants, and donations – including $100,000 from volunteering at bingo halls. They also made more money from liquor sales at the bar than they netted on tickets.
Coming up this year, Angela Hewitt and Eric Friesen are curating a classical series with two shows in March and May. There’s funding for both a new Indigenous series and an LGBTQ+ series and plans for an opera series curated by Ben Heppner.
Who’s coming on May 18?
Judy Collins. And a birthday party for Bruce Cockburn on May 31. You can get tickets for everything here.
Let me say that the arts may be a noble endeavour. They may change, shape and enrich our world. These days especially, they are an uplifting and necessary enterprise.
But they are also a business. Without breaking even, all the need and nobility count for nothing.
Hugh’s Room put sound financial management first. Their business model contained many revenue streams. They committed to at least breaking even on most shows.
They also grew and mobilized their fan base, so the line between ticket buyers, volunteers and donors was quick and direct. And they weren’t afraid to present Hugh’s Room shows in other venues.
And speaking of other venues, you likely saw this week the El Mocambo is being pushed into receivership.
Its decline and fall epitomize the challenges live music venues face everywhere.
But wouldn’t it be nice if some of their investors sat down with Hugh’s Room to figure out how to save this iconic venue, just as Hugh’s Room saved itself?
Meanwhile…
1. Life is a dangerous place. So, please take off your Apple Watch. Also, don’t live close to volcanoes. Don’t fly on these air routes. Don’t skateboard in Swiss tunnels, unless you’re young and crazy. Don’t turn a trick without checking the client and don’t go to Miami Beach for spring break.
2. Reality-based paranoia. From the tossing sea of op-ed pieces since Donald Trump threatened Canada’s existence, two of the most original and reasonable are from Andrew Coyne in the Globe and Mail, and Richard Rooney from Burgundy Asset Management – on what to do next. Oh…and this is how the purge begins.
3. Hard work works. First, become a two-marshmallow human. Next, raise your artificial intelligence. Next, Monty the Giant Schnauzer (a working dog) wins Best in Show at this year’s Westminster Kennel Club. Finally, try not to let grief kill you because Broken Heart Syndrome is a real thing.
4. Cheaters sometimes prosper. There are ‘implausibly high numbers’ of scientific papers submitted by leading scientists. “Some produced hundreds of studies per year with hundreds to thousands of new co-authors annually.” Also, having your bank account hijacked is bad; having your entire scientific journal hijacked is worse.
5. Ruled Britannia. Canadians are part of the largest empire in human history. Here’s some of the Stuff the British Stole. (You can spend an hour now on The Silk Road in the British Museum.) And speaking of Imperial Brits, here’s John Cleese on the benefits of extremism, and the answer to the vexing question: Who killed James Bond?
6. The New Yorker turns 100 years old this week. Here’s Matt Galloway’s interview with the magazine’s editor, David Remnick. (Start at 21:26). And speaking of interviews, Kate Winslet makes it easy.
7. The French are so chic…Especially when they’re American. Or when French women are yelling at French men. Then again, the Americans are so…secret and 19 of them are so…Oscarless.
8. Mountain people. Can a mountain be a person? In New Zealand, it may be. The same thing is happening with rivers; eco groups are taking polluters to court claiming rivers are humans and should enjoy the same protections people do. Indeed, Robert Macfarlane, author of the mega-bestseller Underland, is coming to Toronto in May to talk about his new book, Is a River Alive? on that gnarly subject.
9. A crucial sign someone is worth going out with. Therapy? Really? Plus how not to lose your mind over an ex. Plus a Super Bowl ad that actually produced an emotion.Finally, Meghan tries to convince us she’s a firefighter.
10. What I’m liking. The Netflix series Eric: a 6-part dramatic, kids-but-very-grownups love story of a child who goes missing in New York. What turns Eric into gripping television is Benedict Cumberbatch, who plays the father. Rush to your computer to see this.
What I’m correcting. Last week, I said that fridges aren’t made in Canada anymore. How wrong I was. Many readers pointed me to Danby, a family business in Guelph. As one said: “And what’s more, Danby hired not 10 but 1,000 Syrian refugees to build those fridges and has provided them with a high quality of life, both socially and economically. CEO Jim Estill, the Danby thought leader and entrepreneur, earned an Order of Ontario and Order of Canada and an Everyday Hero’s Award for his vision and work. So let’s stock up them Canadian apples in Canadian vegetable drawers.”