Milwaukee's Pabst Theater Group unveils the name and details for new east side club

The Pabst Theater Group has already announced a couple of shows for its new club, opening early next year at 1818 N. Farwell Ave. 

Now the Milwaukee promoter and venue operator has announced the club's name: Vivarium.

“Vivarium is a Latin word literally meaning ‘place of life,’ and that is exactly what we intend to create with this new venue,” Pabst Theater Group CEO Gary Witt said in a statement issued Wednesday.

Designed by Kubala Washatko Architects, the 450-person-capacity, all-ages venue will have skylights, live greenery and wood walls made from 100-year-old trees from northern Wisconsin. The club will have a blade sign on the building’s facade, bicycle parking space, a load-in area, and green rooms for artists and crew members.

J. H. Findorff & Sons is the contractor for the site; construction got underway this week.

On the Pabst's roster, the club will replace the 300-person-capacity Back Room at Colectivo Coffee, which the Pabst has opened and operated at the coffee chain’s Prospect Avenue location since 2015. An intimate space that hosted local bands and rising future stars like Mitski among other acts, the Back Room will host its final concerts next month.

"Vivarium will be a continuation of the Back Room’s efforts, working to complement an already thriving small-venue ecosystem that includes Cactus Club, Shank Hall, Linneman’s, X-Ray Arcade, the Cooperage and others, by creating more space for the Milwaukee community to gather and artists, local and national, to perform," Witt said in a statement.

One of those Milwaukee small venue operators, Cactus Club owner Kelsey Kaufmann, offered an endorsement of Vivarium in a statement Wednesday.

"We’ve needed a room of this size for a while,” Kaufmann said. “We’re building a culture of camaraderie in Milwaukee across venues, genres and artistic disciplines. The Cactus team is excited to collaborate with Pabst Theater Group on shows and events in the years ahead.”

The Cactus Club has already signed on as a co-promoter for one Vivarium show: rapper Mike, a previous Cactus Club performer, on April 26.

An opening date for Vivarium has yet to be announced, but four other shows have also been announced. Tickets are on sale for all five at pabsttheater.org, including Molly Grace, Feb. 22; the Moss, March 9; Sir Chloe, March 13; and Eliza McLamb, April 5.

The space Vivarium is occupying has been vacant for four years. The three other tenants at the building will remain: a Domino's location, Ethiopian Cottage and Chinese restaurant Chopstix.

Established in 2003, the Pabst Theater Group also operates the 4,087-seat Miller High Life Theatre; the 2,500-seat Riverside Theater; the 1,300-seat Pabst Theater; the 987-person-capacity Turner Hall Ballroom; and wedding and events venue the Fitzgerald. The group also promotes shows at other venues in town, including the Bradley Symphony Center and Fiserv Forum.

Last year, the Pabst group announced plans to operate a built-from-scratch, 3,500-person-capacity ballroom-style music venue at the proposed Iron District on the west side of downtown, in partnership with concert giant AEG. But those plans appear to be dead, with S.R. Mills, CEO of the district's co-developer Bear Development, telling the Milwaukee Business Journal the event space would be smaller and more flexible.

But another Wisconsin concert player — Madison-based, Live Nation-backed FPC Live — still plans to open a new music venue in Milwaukee. The $60 million, 4,500-person-capacity ballroom-style venue — downsized from original plans for two stages, due to rising construction costs — was approved by the Milwaukee Plan Commission last month. Scheduled to operate on the old Bradley Center lot, land owned by the Milwaukee Bucks, the yet-to-be-named venue is expected to open in 2025, pending further approvals this year from the Common Council.

Contact Piet at (414) 223-5162 or plevy@journalsentinel.com. Follow him on X at @pietlevy or Facebook at facebook.com/PietLevyMJS.