How Club Space Brought 24 Hour Nightlife to Miami

Transcript

Welcome to Space. Space to me is like going to church on Sundays. Nine in the morning, and look how many people are jumping up and down. We're going to [...] beat our own space.

It's March 18th, 2000. Club Space Miami opened its doors for the first time. Originally located just a block down the street from where it is today, it was the first ever club to offer a 24-hour nightlife scene in Miami. If you're into the club life, then you know what goes on here. Weekend-long parties that go on for 72 hours straight, marathon sets that bleed into Monday mornings. But there's a part of the story that people will never get to see: the story of how one district bent the rules, and how one man built a community that refused to sleep.

In the 1990s, Miami nightlife was all about South Beach. It looked a lot different than it does today. Back then, Miami nightlife was flashy, controlled, and short-lived, with dress codes and VIP tables. But there was one man who had a vision to change it all and bring the Ibiza nightlife scene to Miami. He wanted to offer it to the locals and make a nightlife community for all walks of life. This is Louis Puig, known as the guy who pioneered the 24-hour nightlife scene in Miami, and the guy who changed the law forever.

So it all started in Ibiza. At the age of 21, Louis had the craziest idea for a nightclub. While in Ibiza, he said this: the clubs didn't close, they just stayed open. From that experience on, and from all those years of clubbing and DJing and working at nightclubs, it gave him an idea of what would make a great club. But it wasn't actually until about 14 years later that he put this plan into action.

In 1999, Louis started looking into locations, because he knew he couldn't do what everyone else was doing. All these South Beach clubs were too saturated, too political, and just fake. He wasn't just looking for a spot that was less expensive; he wanted to build a place with culture built around after hours, underground music, and a local crowd. That's when he realized the perfect place to build Space: downtown Miami.

The thing was, it was the worst part of Miami. There were no restaurants, no bars, no entertainment anchors. Even cab drivers were hesitant to drop people off there. It seemed logical not to even consider this a good spot, but Louis could see the future in it. It was a perfect spot, actually. It was cheap. The landlords had nobody to rent to, and it was far enough from South Beach to draw a unique kind of crowd.

But Louis knew something: the location wouldn't be enough if he wanted to attract people downtown. He would need something unique, different, creative. If he wanted people to come here, he decided Club Space would need to be the hot after-party spot.

Back then, clubs would close around 3 to 5 a.m., and as a pretty big party city, most people would after-party at a house. Puig understood this, and that's when he hatched a plan to bring the Ibiza 24-hour scene to Miami. But he would need to change some laws if he wanted people to party around the clock. Luckily, the director of the Downtown Development Authority found out about what was going on, and she was a huge fan of the idea. She claimed nightclubs are like the seed that starts entertainment districts: once one club opens up, a food spot opens across the street, then another club. So they decided they would need the city's approval if they wanted a 24-hour liquor license.

After a bit of convincing on the idea that people would actually be out at 7 a.m., in 2000, just before the opening of Space, a law was passed: a two-by-two-block segment designated a 24-hour entertainment district, where you could sell liquor around the clock. On March 18th, 2000, Club Space opened its doors for the first time. It was an instant success. People couldn't stop talking about this crazy club that just never shut down. Initially it was only open on Saturdays.

Space featured a variety of rooms, each with its own genre: the Blue Room for trance, the Red Room for house, and even a room for hip-hop. On the outside it seemed like Club Space was thriving, and it did, making its money back in just six months. But there were still problems, like with one of the most popular attractions of Space, the terrace, also known as the patio.

Yes, it was a massive success, but there were still problems with it. The terrace is a clear, wide-open patio on the roof of Space. It looks a lot different today than it did back then, when the entire roof was open. But there was a problem: the music would project to residents of nearby high-rise condos, and the sound was described as relentless. This became an issue because residents organized a petition highlighting that the club's atrium design funneled noise upward and into their apartments, impacting neighborhood buildings up to the 50th floor. In response, Louis had to add a partially covered roof, which is why it looks the way it does today.

At one point the club was doing so well that other competing clubs on the beaches of Miami were threatening them. Louis said big competitors would call in bomb threats. They would tell their clients it was an after-hours drug-abused scene, and Club Space was doing so well it started making enemies. Competing beach clubs tried to shut it down. Louis said they'd call in fake bomb threats, they told people it was a drug den, and they even tried locking DJs into exclusive contracts to keep them from playing at Club Space.

So what did Louis do? He fought back. He brought in off-duty cops for his security, so that when real officers came to investigate these fake threats, the off-duty guys would just shut it down immediately. And the irony of it all: those clubs that tried to shut down Space are no longer around.

Louis Puig was never chasing trends. He never faked anything, because he was building something real in a part of the city everyone else ignored. Eventually, everyone tried to copy him. Today, Club Space isn't just a nightclub. It's a landmark. Louis carved out a space, literally. He's the guy who saw what Miami could be when everyone else just saw a dead zone in downtown. It all started with a vision, and became a city that learned how to party past sunrise.