{"id":2879,"date":"2025-06-18T23:36:20","date_gmt":"2025-06-18T23:36:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/brooklyn-mirage-reopening-club-co-managed-axar-capital\/"},"modified":"2025-06-18T23:36:20","modified_gmt":"2025-06-18T23:36:20","slug":"brooklyn-mirage-reopening-club-co-managed-axar-capital","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/brooklyn-mirage-reopening-club-co-managed-axar-capital\/","title":{"rendered":"Brooklyn Mirage Has Been Quietly Co-Managed by Hedge Fund Manager Axar Capital Amid Reopening\u00a0Drama"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n\tA New York hedge fund manager linked to the SFX bankruptcy has been quietly co-managing Avant Gardner and the temporarily closed Brooklyn Mirage nightclub since late last year and leading unsuccessful efforts trying to get it reopened, Billboard<\/em> has learned.<\/p>\n

\n\tAndrew Axelrod<\/strong>\u2019s Axar Capital has been a secured creditor of Avant Gardner \u2014 the Brooklyn nightclub company that books and manages the Brooklyn Mirage, Kings Hall and the Great Hall \u2014 since late 2023, sources close to the company have confirmed.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\t\t\t\t\tAfter Messy 2023 Electric Zoo, Lawsuits Are Piling Up For Owner Avant\u00a0Gardner\t\t<\/p>\n<\/h3><\/div>\n

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\n\tA year prior, former Avant Gardner CEO Billy Bildstein<\/strong> had negotiated the purchase of<\/a> the Electric Zoo festival from Axelrod, whose Axar Capital was the senior creditor to media mogul Bob Sillerman<\/strong>\u2019s one-time EDM conglomerate SFX \u2014\u00a0of which Electric Zoo\u2019s parent company, Made Events, was a part. When SFX went bankrupt in 2015, Axar Capital led a takeover of the company, rebranding it LiveStyle and hiring music executive Randy Phillips<\/strong> to lead a selloff of its assets, which included U.S. promoters like Disco Donnie Presents and Life in Color; Europe\u2019s ID&T, the Dutch promoter behind Tomorrowland; and EDM tech startups like Denver-based electronic music platform Beatport. The last asset to sell, in 2022, was Made Events. Axelrod wanted $15 million for the company and structured the deal so that Avant Gardner could pay Axar Capital using the proceeds from the Electric Zoo festival.<\/p>\n

\n\tAvant Gardner successfully ran the Electric Zoo festival in 2022 but was sidelined by multiple fiascos<\/a> the following year including permit denials, gate crashers, the cancellation of the festival\u2019s opening day and accusations of overselling the closing day by 7,000 fans. Due to the disastrous 2023 run, Avant Gardner has faced multiple lawsuits <\/a>from both fans and unpaid vendors and was condemned by a one-time ally, New York Mayor Eric Adams, who had previously supported the popular Brooklyn Mirage and sided with Bildstein during his high-profile battle with the State Liquor Authority. <\/p>\n

\n\tSources tell Billboard<\/em> that the demise of the festival, and Avant Gardner\u2019s inability to pay Axar the reported $15 million price tag for Electric Zoo, are what led to Axar becoming a senior creditor to Avant Gardner. Terms of the Electric Zoo sale are not public, but a previous agreement<\/a> between Axar and publicly traded streaming service LiveOne, which purchased\u00a0Chicago\u2019s Spring Awakening festival \u2014 another SFX asset \u2014 shows how Axelrod liked to structure some of those deals. \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tIn that agreement, Axelrod sold Spring Awakening to LiveOne for $2.5 million in convertible loans that Axelrod could turn into equity. The deal allowed LiveOne to take over the festival immediately and pay Axelrod back over two years. There was even an option for Axelrod to accept LiveOne stock instead of cash if shares of the company hit certain price targets, but they never did. A month after the deal closed, COVID-19 hit, and Spring Awakening 2020 was canceled. After LiveOne lost $3.5 million on the 2021 event, Axelrod agreed to accept $2.4 million worth of LiveOne stock. But five months later, the value of LiveOne\u2019s stock had fallen 70%, dropping the value of Axelrod\u2019s LiveOne shares to approximately $700,000.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\t\t\t\t\tBrooklyn Mirage Opening Indefinitely Delayed by Construction Permit\u00a0Problems\u00a0\t\t<\/p>\n<\/h3><\/div>\n

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\n\tAvant Gardner is a private company, so it\u2019s unclear how the agreement with Axar was structured. Sources tell Billboard<\/em> that Axelrod made additional investments into the Brooklyn Mirage, which recently underwent extensive renovations and is now attempting to navigate New York\u2019s Department of Buildings to secure a permit to open. \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tOn May 22, Avant Gardner parted ways with <\/a>Josh Wyatt<\/strong>, a hospitality executive Axelrod had hired to run the company and guide it through renovations that saw the club close for construction. The Brooklyn Mirage was supposed to open May 1 with a concert by Sara Landry<\/a>, but building inspectors declined to grant<\/a> the facility a permit to open. A month and a half later, the club has been forced to cancel and relocate more than a dozen shows as its permit problems persist. \u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tGary Richards<\/strong>, a promoter, touring artist and former CEO of Livestyle for Axar Capital, is now running Avant Gardner and managing day-to-day operations. Billboard<\/em> reached out to Richards and Axar but was told that neither planned to comment for this story.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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A New York hedge fund manager linked to the SFX bankruptcy has been quietly co-managing Avant Gardner and the temporarily closed Brooklyn Mirage nightclub since late last year and leading…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[710,387,94,450],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2879","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-avant-gardner","category-business","category-music-news","category-touring"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2879","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2879"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2879\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2879"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2879"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2879"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}