The weekends aren’t going to be so dead at 13th and H streets Northeast anymore.The Rock & Roll Hotel, a concert venue and lounge, is scheduled for its official opening tomorrow in a building that used to house a funeral home.
The 7,000-square-foot, two-story building at 1353 H St. NE has been completely remodeled. The ground floor features a bar and stage. Upstairs are five private rooms available for bands to rent, a second bar, a pool table, a jukebox and a sitting area. Purple drapes keep out the light from the large windows in front.
The Rock & Roll Hotel is the highlight of what will be a collection of eight entertainment venues, all but the hotel building itself owned in part by Joe Englert, who also owns bars on Connecticut Avenue Northwest and Pennsylvania Avenue Southeast. The group is designed to make H Street, from 12th to 15th streets, an entertainment district.
For now, the building is a hotel in name only. Although bands can rent practice space, construction is not complete on the two third-floor hotel rooms, intended primarily for the bands playing there.
The idea is to house a concert venue, practice space and a bar in one building, but to have enough space for people to spread out during a show.
“I go to concerts and I don’t like to be near the band,” said Mr. Englert, one of the bar’s six co-owners, who prefers to move around the building during a show.
At the same time, the owners wanted their venue to have character.
“There’s not a lot of beauty or quirks in most concert spaces,” he said.
Upstairs rooms have antique-style furniture, and each practice room features a different theme, from the regal Presidential Suite to the grungy Jimi Hendrix Suite.
The owners expect the Rock & Roll Hotel’s acts to be about 70 percent national and 30 percent local, focusing on rock, indie, alternative and underground music. Wooly Mammoth will perform tomorrow, and the Presets will take the stage Sept. 8. Some shows will be limited to people 18 or 21 and older.
The owners plan to pay homage to the building’s previous use with tributes to dead rockers such as Janis Joplin, Kurt Cobain and Jimi Hendrix.
“When we started the renovations, we heard some spooky noises,” Bryan Deily, co-owner and manager of the venue, said jokingly.
The building has been vacant since Robert O. Freeman Funeral Services Inc. closed a few years ago. The Rock & Roll Hotel’s lease began in March 2005.
The owners have high hopes for the hotel and the H Street corridor.
Two of the bars, the Red & the Black and Showbar Palace of Wonders, have been open for two months and are turning a profit, Mr. Englert said, declining to be more specific.
For now, the crowd is about half locals and half from other areas of the District. People in the crowd generally are in their late 20s to early 30s, the owners say.
The owners are recruiting coffee shops, a bakery and clothing stores for the area. Mr. Englert is looking for space for a miniature golf course.
The idea is to turn H Street into a bar-hopping entertainment area that offers dinner, drinks and a show.
The owners have formed a de facto business improvement district to clean sidewalks and make taxis available for patrons.
Mr. Englert is confident that H Street will be a quick success.
“The dining dollar is finite,” he said. “The entertainment dollar is infinite.”
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