Inside downtown Las Vegas’ newest dance hot spot: By locals, for locals
It’s opening night, and you feel it beneath your feet, toes vibrating to the beat like plucked guitar strings.
Just after 8 p.m., the party’s just getting started, so the dance floor is sparsely populated, but it’s already full with sound — 200,000 watts that reverberate all the way down to your heels, conjuring an almost ticklish sensation.
There’s little else here to absorb the sound: The decor is minimalist in this open, 18,000-square-foot space with low ceilings, engendering a kind of chic warehouse vibe.
By contrast, the audiovisual flourishes are decidedly maximalist: A massive, 100-foot-long video wall pulsates behind the DJ booth, brightening the room like flashes of lightning illuminating a dark sky.
In a nightclub/electronic dance music destination market such as Las Vegas, you’d expect to find a venue like this on the Strip.
But this club is nestled on the second floor of a downtown shopping mall amid indoor go-kart tracks, tattoo parlors, a Denny’s and the Axehole ax-throwing and smash room.
Meet Neonopolis’ newest tenant: Substance, a nightspot with plenty of promise, if not precedence.
Substance is owned and operated by RVLTN Events (pronounced rave-alation). The Las Vegas-based company has served as the backbone of the local electronic dance music scene for over a decade now, promoting shows all over the city, ranging from large outdoor venues such as the Downtown Las Vegas Events Center and the Craig Ranch amphitheater to various rooms with roofs such as We All Scream, Swan Dive and Area15.
”Marcel and I have been promoters in Vegas for a long time,” notes Joe Borusiewicz, executive talent buyer at RVLTN, alluding to his partner and company founder Marcel Correa. “We’ve done events at notable hard ticket venues all throughout the city, and doing our own venue, our own way, has always been a dream of ours since we got into this whole thing.”
A club by locals, for locals
It was a year and half in the making, this Thursday night in early July.
That’s how long it took for Substance to go from dream to reality, opening its doors to the public for the first time.
“Part of the reason why the planning process was as long as it was is that we really tried to think meticulously about every aspect of the pros and cons from other venues,” Borusiewicz explains. “If we could design the ideal room, how would we want to do it? What things would jump out to us that we should prioritize — not only as promoters but from a fan and a guest experience perspective as well.
“We really tried to address everything,” he continues, “and create something that is unique in a lot of ways.”
For starters, they knew Substance had to be downtown.
“We’ve been involved with the entertainment scene down there for quite a long time,” Borusiewicz says. “We just love downtown. As locals, it’s the place where we we find ourselves partying the most. That’s definitely where we wanted to be.”
They also wanted the club to cater to locals, in particular.
“You have multibillion-dollar corporations up and down the Strip that are pumping tens of millions of dollars into marketing efforts and competing with one another to try to win the tourist business, win the tourist dollar and get everyone to their club,” Borusiewicz says. “Our approach has always been ‘Go from the inside out. Get the locals to support your venue and take good care of them.’ As locals, we really feel like any business that prioritizes the people that actually live here and make it all happen, that’s just a winning formula across the board.”
Choreographed operation
So what does this formula include when it comes to Substance?
An emphasis on ease and affordability, with modestly priced drinks served at a long bar with multiple service stations that runs across the back of the room.
“We wanted to reduce the wait time for drinks,” Borusiewicz says. “If you’re standing in line, you’re not having fun, you’re not on the dance floor.”
“Another thing is, we have about 30 restrooms in the venue,” he adds. “Going to other venues throughout the city, there’s usually long lines, and the bathrooms tend to get a little bit messy, a little bit disorganized. So, that was something that we wanted to eliminate.”
As for the room itself, it formerly housed a food court and then an art gallery and had to be completely reconfigured for Substance.
It wasn’t easy.
”We twisted the stage. We twisted the bar,” notes Thom Svast, Substance’s venue director. “We went through so many evolutions of those concepts before we could finally settle on one. What can we do to have the biggest and best stage, with the best back-of-house and the best dance floor? How do we develop those ‘wow’ moments with the layouts that we had?
“We really tried to think of everything, design and operationally,” he continues, “about the speed and efficiency of the club during busy hours.”
Dance music and more
We’ve gone over the sights at Substance. Now for the sounds: Friday nights will be electronic music-based, programmed by RVLTN in conjunction with Insomniac events, the EDM behemoth behind Electric Daisy Carnival and other events across the globe.
“It’s going to be just a wide array of all different flavors, everything from bass music, dubstep, techno, drum ’n’ bass — just kind of all across the board,” Borusiewicz notes. “It’s not going to follow any particular genre or theme. We just want to put on something for everybody.”
Saturday nights will be hosted by Altura Presents, RVLTN’s popular Latin music brand.
Live music could also be in the venue’s future.
“It’s actually meant to be able to handle just about everything, not just DJ-based music,” Borusiewicz says. “The eventual plan is to be programming all genres and start picking up a lot of the other tours that just don’t hit Vegas because they don’t have a venue of this size.”
In the meantime, Borusiewicz says that Substance will aim to give local music fans more of what they like and less of what they don’t.
“People don’t like to have to walk through a casino to go to a show. You don’t want to have to pay $50 for parking because there’s some event going on down the street. You don’t want to spend a fortune on drinks.
“The demand is certainly there,” he continues. “The experience, I just feel was a little bit lacking. So, we think Substance can be a missing piece in a lot of different ways for the music scene here.”
Contact Jason Bracelin at jbracelin@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0476. Follow @jbracelin76 on Instagram.