Rebel Lounge owner Stephen Chilton with Reap & Sow Owners Luke Bentley & Lance Linderman | Photo by Charles Barth
The leisure and hospitality industries were some of the hardest hit by COVID-19, with employment in these sectors falling from 39 percent to 15 percent in the first few months of the pandemic.
In an effort to keep team members employed and sustain their companies, many local business owners found ways to lean on each other to steady revenues and pivot their offerings.
Movie theaters are among some of the hardest hit businesses after experiencing months of state-mandated closures and hesitancy amongst community members to return to indoor entertainment spaces. Due to COVID-19, FilmBar, a small indie movie theater that has called Downtown Phoenix home for more than a decade, made the decision to close its doors this year and move its programming to Pemberton – a new collaborative outdoor space born out of the pandemic.
The partnership is unique in that it will allow FilmBar, and the other businesses claiming space at Pemberton, complete independence and creative control over their operations.
“As a very small community in Downtown Phoenix, to have people come together and get creative and collaborate to still provide experiences that you can feel proud of but also are true to what you’ve always cared to do for your events is important,” says Biannca Dominguez, the director of programming and partnership for Pemberton’s developer, True North Studio.
From now on, Pemberton will serve as the venue for FilmBar’s movies, offering guests a safer, outdoor option for viewing. FilmBar has also partnered with the city’s largest art museum, the Phoenix Art Museum, to show vintage films like Black Orpheus and Tokyo Drifter at the museum’s garden space.
Pemberton has leaned into partnerships, working with a local art nonprofit to house public art pieces and serving as a venue for outdoor workout spaces and several restaurants that will have their own outdoor satellite spaces on property, including San Diego-based Abnormal Beer Co. and Phoenix favorite breakfast spot, Breakfast Bitch.
“Pemberton is this healthy mix of out of state concepts, so we can introduce new brands to people with community staples and then growing brands, so it really lends itself to being an environment that feels inclusive for all different crowds of people,” Dominguez says.
Similar to movie theaters, small independent concert venues have been devastated by the pandemic with no hope for large gatherings in the future, and in many ways were set back even further with little political representation and no organized advocacy network.
“We realized we’re going to be closed for a long time, and no one in Washington is paying attention to us because we’re not a group of organizations that has really rallied together in the past,” says Jeff Taylor, a marketer and talent buyer at The Rebel Lounge. “We don’t have a strong presence the way some other industries like restaurants and movie theaters. Some of those folks have real representation already.”
Initially, the venue wasn’t sure how it could move forward, or what the future would look like, but owner Steve Chilton decided to help organize other struggling venues as one of the leaders of the National Independent Venue Association.
By fall, the venue realized concerts wouldn’t be back anytime soon and partnered with an Arizona coffee shop to start serving coffee during the day as Reap & Sow Coffee Bar, then open as a bar in the evenings.
“[Opening a coffee shop] wasn’t our first thought, but a lot of venues did manage to pivot or shift gears very quickly last year,” Taylor says. “What we did was throw up a merch sale to support our staff directly and hope that that would help tide us over for a bit. And obviously it was cool for our staff for a little while, but it wasn’t anything substantial enough to get us through the year, so opening in the fall was definitely an experiment.”
Due to capacity restrictions and social distancing measures, The Rebel Lounge still isn’t reaching its pre-pandemic revenue numbers, but the team is looking forward to the day it’s safe for the venue to host concerts again.
“We’re super optimistic that people can hopefully come back and see concerts,” Taylor says. “No one knows the right day or time of when that will happen but we’re really optimistic that we’re going to be here during this dark period and come out on the other side, hopefully.”
