The Marquis Park City is the former site of Park City Live and before that Harry O’s and Z Place. A portion of the building at 427 Main St. even served as KPCW’s first broadcast studio.
The building was dedicated as the War Veterans Memorial Building in 1940. It was a federal New Deal project funded by a $57,000 grant that was matched with local funds. 40 years later, the building, which was run by Summit County, was outdated and in need of repairs and turned over to Park City Municipal in 1977. The city used the building as a recreation center, and defacto city offices. Park City later sold the building to a developer in 1986.
Kenny Griswold purchased the building in the late 1990s, reopened the building as Harry O’s and began hosting the exclusive, invite-only Chef Dance in 2003.
Griswold is an actor who moved to Park City some 40 years ago. He co-owned the former Park West ski resort that he renamed Wolf Mountain and was able to successfully piece together more than 100 parcels of land which were leased to American Skiing Company of Utah and ultimately purchased by the Toronto-based Talisker Corp. in 2008.
Over the last three years, Griswold has invested $10 million into the building’s renovation top to bottom. He had tons of dirt excavated from the basement to enlarge the restaurant and says he’ll be open with the first of many high-profile concerts, Nas, on Dec. 28.
With dozens of construction workers in every part of the 3-story concrete building, Griswold is confident that what is now a busy construction zone will be finished and a liquor license obtained by opening night.
“I’m going to ask you again, when was the last building you built,” he asked. “And it’s funny to have people who are not in any specialty commenting on other people’s specialty. It will be a 1200-person venue. It's built for everything that Park City wants to do. Nightlife, great concerts, charity events, special events, grand 50-year birthday parties with One Republic playing. There has been a void in this town.”
It’s a void Griswold is looking to fill. He’s working with LNE Presents, one of the most prominent independent music promoters in the country, to bring in more top-tier acts. Louis the Child is booked for Dec. 29 and DJ Spider will be mixing the music on New Year’s Eve. Griswold says The Marquis Park City will be open 200 nights a year.
“There'll be approximately 100 concerts,” he said. “There'll be 15 grand, what we call special nights - New Year's Eve, Halloween. There'll be themed lights. Paul Oakenfold. In 1998, 1999, Paul Oakenfold was the number one DJ in the world. He toured and opened for U2 and for Madonna. Paul is one of my dearest friends and he's our resident DJ. So, Paul will play 12 nights a year, one time a month.”
New Art Deco lights grace the upper level where there will be private booths for rent as well as two VIP areas with private bars overlooking the stage. There’s also a green room for the musical acts who will be performing. And the women’s restroom, he says is almost twice the size of what the men’s and women’s rooms together used to be. But what he’s really excited about is the state-of-the-art sound system.
“The number one sound engineer in the world is Dave Rat. Rat Sound. Dave Rat installed that system. That'll be the best sound system this state has ever seen. It's an L acoustics K3 system indoors. So, they just sound tested that system here on Saturday. No money can buy that system right now because they're backlogged a year or two. You can't even get them. It's a very, very, very serious sound system.”
Fortunately, he says the foot-thick board formed concrete building is a natural sound insulator and neighbors won’t have to wait for the music to end each night to fall asleep.
Click here to have a look or purchase tickets for the upcoming acts that are booked.
