The Copacabana could be moving to Da Bronx.
The famed nightspot at 34th Street and Eleventh Avenue shut its doors last Saturday night, leaving the fate of the club, made famous by Barry Manilow’s popular song of the same name, up in the air.
“We’ve been actively showing him spaces in the Bronx and there is a good chance the Copa may be leaving the city,” said the club’s broker, Alex Picken of Picken Real Estate & Nightlife Brokerage.
The MTA late last year condemned the club, which was cater-cornered from the Javits Center, to make way for a new No. 7 line station. Since then, owner John Juliano has been actively seeking a new locale, but has been stymied by climbing rents and neighborhood resistance .
“No one wants a nightclub in their backyards,” he bemoaned. “The city that never sleeps wants to sleep.”
Juliano has acknowledged that he probably can’t replicate the 50,000 square feet that his 34th Street venue had, and said he would now be happy with 20,000 to 25,000 square feet. “Half would be fine,” Juliano said.
In the meantime, he’ll be running some events at his Columbus 72, a smaller club that holds 800 partygoers.
There is also the possibility of a bifurcation of operations, something that many office tenants are also now considering in the face of climbing rents. That would involve keeping a private catering operation in Manhattan and a public party club in an outer borough – possibly the Bronx.
