25 Years Of Club Space: Iconic Miami Venue Reflects On A Quarter Century Of 24-Hour Parties

In the heart of Miami, Club Space has kept the good times rolling for 25 years. The downtown venue runs for 24 hours, and is the only one of its kind in the U.S. When Amanda Lee, head of brand marketing and partner at Space speaks with Pollstar, she’s heading into Miami Music Week – one of the most jam-packed weeks of her year. The club will close the celebrations from Sunday to Tuesday with a full 48-hour party, the music not stopping a single moment throughout that time. 

As Lee describes, it’s a marathon, and she and the entire Space team have been training for this moment. They hit the gym, they take zinc and ginger shots, they’ve forfeited alcohol and they’re scheduling in time to sleep in their calendars. 

The Space team’s training for Miami Music Week is par for the course for the entire dance music industry. The whole scene flies in for several days, timed around Ultra Music Festival (also celebrating 25 years this weekend). The 2,000-cap venue hosts shows from top DJs including FISHER and John Summit, with Insomniac overseeing operations. Throughout Miami Music Week, Boys Noize, Yoyaku and Slapfunk, Cloonee and the Martinez Brothers back-to-back Loco Dice, Solid Grooves, Camelphat and more, with the closing party featuring performances by Peggy Gou, Beltran, Chris Stussy and more.

“Two weekends ago, on the 14th, we had our official anniversary,” Lee tells Pollstar. “But we’re still celebrating during Music Week so everyone can attend.” 

The team also celebrated the official anniversary with Louis Puig, who originally created the venue. He and Victor Calderone got behind the decks for the anniversary celebration, marking both of their return to the venue for the first time in years.

Lee invited fans to call a phone number and leave messages about their favorite memories at the venue, noting a lot of fans called talking about how they met their best friends, their husbands, or their wives at Space. She and the team have been pouring through the voice messages, posting them on their social media pages. When she sits down with Pollstar, she mentions she still has half of the messages to get through, and that the marketing team plans on rolling them out through the coming months. 

The ethos of Space stands out from the rest of venues in North America. Over the weekends, Space will run for 24 hours, making it the only club in the U.S. to do so. The venue takes its inspiration from European venues, where going out late and staying until long past the sunrise isn’t entirely uncommon. 

“We really want to honor the European dancefloor ideology where people typically go to dinner as a family and then they all go to the club afterwards,” Lee says. “We highly encourage and want that. We want to see families dancing together and having a good time and uniting over music and their love together.” 

The venue closed last summer for some renovations, wanting to improve sound so there was less bleed through as the downtown area of Miami expands with more hotels, apartment complexes and businesses. Lee notes that there hasn’t been as much significant change in the area throughout Space’s 25-year history, but gentrification has moved in and began changing the neighborhood. While Space remains a notable location in the area, the venue has had to change in order to accommodate its new neighbors. Lee promises the skylight in the main room remains (preventing the venue from being completely sound-proofed) in order for fans to continue watching the sunrise as they dance at Space. But the rest of the building has been upgraded to ensure the venue can remain without facing considerable noise complaints. 

“Downtown is really expanding and there’s a lot of development in the area,” Lee explains. “And the area hasn’t really had development in the last 25 years. So, it’s been rapidly changing. They’re building towers and residences around the club. We’ve had major construction surrounding us, and with that we had to change the flow of the nightclub so we could be compliant with fire safety exits and whatnot. We closed down and changed the entire floor plan, so now when you walk in you go straight into Space and don’t pass through Ground [another Insomniac-owned nightclub in the same building]. It’s good because it really made Ground its own venue.

“With that forced remodel, we upgraded sound. There may not be as many visible changes, but we did operational changes of how we’re able to function and provide better service. Bar upgrades, bathroom upgrades, furniture in the VIPs. We also changed the DJ booth to make it bigger, so it’s not quite as packed in there.”

For Miami Music Week, the venue’s looking forward to its two-day closing party running from Sunday to Tuesday. Lee notes how it’s impossible for anyone to stay at the venue the entire time, so they’re breaking the days up into shifts. 

“We take turns, write out schedules and are strategic on who’s going to be where and how we’re going to capture moments and be there to facilitate any sort of operations,” Lee says. “We all take ginger shots while we’re at the club, which is one of our non-alcoholic features. We survive off our ginger shots and electrolytes. It really is a marathon. It’s a lot of healthcare and we take it seriously because this is a professional week for us. It’s a lot of networking – not only our events, but supporting and attending partner events as well.”

Throughout the rest of the season, Club Space will host shows from Ivy Lab, Bedouin and LP Giobbi, Claude VonStroke, Darude and more.