EASTON, Pa. - When popular Easton concert venue One Centre Square opened in June 2016, owners Billy Cornish and Greg Melhem said they were seeing a resurgence in the downtown and wanted to be part of it.
Five and a half years later, the growing economic hub in Easton's Centre Square is prompting the music venue to close.
After hundreds of concerts, One Centre Square had its last formal show on Dec. 16 with up-and-coming top 40 country singer Dillon Carmichael.
It will have its final show on Saturday — an open-to-the-public New Year's Eve party with Loudmix and DJ June.
- One Centre Square, the popular music venue that offered national touring acts in downtown Easton for the past five and a half years, is closing
- Its final show will be an open-to-the-public New Year's Eve show with DJ June and Loudmix
- It is the site of a planned new seven-story hotel that will open in the summer of 2024
The club is the site of a proposed seven-story hotel at 1-6 Centre Square. The city planning commission approved plans for the project this month. It's scheduled to open in the summer of 2024.
The hotel plans also will close The Standard, which, just a couple of doors away from One Centre Square at 5 Centre Square, called itself a "modern American bar and restaurant."
It, too, will close after New Year's Eve, Melhem said.
“It just was time," said Melhem, who with Cornish previously operated Drinky's bar at the same site for 13 years. "Being there for 20 years in downtown Easton, it was just time."
Melhem said he got an attractive offer from developer and restaurateur Mick Gjevukaj of the Enjoy with Gusto restaurant & hospitality group.
“I got the right number; I got what I was looking for," Melhem said. "It made me happy. ... in Billy’s and my eyes, it was, like, ‘OK, we’ve done this. We’ve been here long enough. Let’s see what happens.'"
“Those guys are very successful, and everything they touch right now is gold. They see something that they can do to make it bigger and better where I couldn’t. And I’m very happy for them. I’m very excited for where Easton’s headed."
Creating a buzz
Melhem and Cornish said their original goal was to help create a buzz in downtown Easton when they opened.
"Our idea is, 'Great — you come down here and eat, you're done at 7, 8 o'clock. What are you doing next?'" Cornish said at the time.
The pair worked to transform the building into what they hoped would be more than just a club — a trendy entertainment center, with attractions such as a VIP balcony and a second bar overlooking the stage.
Melhem and Cornish said their vision was to bring back to the Lehigh Valley a high-profile venue that would attract nationally touring music and comedy acts to the area's strong arts and lifestyle mix. It would be the Valley's first real rock club since Allentown's famed Crocodile Rock Café had closed two years earlier.
And with the two-story, 1,000-capacity venue — created with $1 million in renovations, Melhem said — they did.
Melhem said the pair's research showed them Easton's location between Philadelphia and New York put it right along the touring routes of most music acts.
'I loved it'
One Centre Square offered platinum-selling hard rock band Saliva its first week, and quickly brought on a diverse lineup of shows that included 1990s dance music with C+C Music Factory, former boy band and teen idol O-Town and Ryan Cabrera, rappers Afroman and PnB Rock, and rock acts Puddle of Mudd, Saving Abel and Otep.
“I loved it," Melhem said. "Being there, being in Easton, I loved it."
"I loved it. Being there, being in Easton. I loved it."
One Centre Square co-owner Greg Melhem
Tom Taylor of Tom Taylor Concerts, who booked many of the shows at One Centre Square, said of the closing, "It does suck. I really did like it there." He then said Melhem and Cornish "were great guys."
“Billy and Greg allowed me as their main promoter to bring in multiple genres," Taylor said. "So I got a chance to sell out Insane Clown Posse. I got a chance to sell out Ja Rule. I had a chance to sell out Overkill — those guys were from the ’80s, which was one of the coolest shows ever, they said."
“I got a chance to sell out Fuel, with Brett Scallions, and I got a chance to bring in Ratt, Stephen Pearcy, and that sold out, and Whitechapel. So I took six different genres of music and was able to sell them out."
Taylor said his favorite One Centre Square memory was when he booked metalcore band Whitechapel in November 2018.
“I was on the beach in Mexico, checking my ticket link — and this was two weeks before the show was happening — when I saw that it was at 800 tickets!" Taylor said. "I called Billy and Greg from Mexico and said, ‘Guys, you have to take the show off sale – we’re already oversold.’"
“That, to me, that Billy and Greg gave me the ability to bring them all different kinds of genres, that was the best feeling. You could see they wanted to go in different directions.”
But Melhem said being diverse also brought criticism.
“We definitely had hardships with people not liking some of the acts I brought in," he said. "I got criticized for it — definitely got criticized a lot. But if we say we’re an artists’ town, how can you stop artists from playing places?
Melhem said people would say, “Why do you have so many country shows? Why you have a rapper here?"
He said that when platinum-selling, painted-faced hip-hop duo Insane Clown Posse played at One Centre Square, "I got criticized so much."
"And those people were some of the sweetest people I ever met. Nothing happened, but before they got there, holy cow was I being judged."
“You can’t bring in country shows all the time because those people can’t come out all the time. You have to cater to everybody.”
Hurt by COVID-19
Less than four years into One Centre Square's life, the onset of coronavirus hit concert venues particularly hard — at first closing them, then requiring crippling measures when they reopened, Melhem said.
“It affected us financially a lot," he said. "And also mentally — it was draining, trying to figure out how to keep your business. I have three children and my youngest is going to college this year. Billy has three children; he has two of them in college. There’s a lot that goes along with that and the responsibility."
"COVID hit a lot. It hurt everybody. Luckily we survived and got through it, which helped. But it was very draining."
When One Centre Square was allowed to reopen, "the artists had so many rules... To see them, you had to be so far back [from the stage] — all kinds of things. Everybody had to be vaccinated who came in the building."
So Melhem said he still significantly reduced the venue's number of shows.
"I wasn’t going to go through all that," he said. "People had been going through enough."
'Just have to turn the chapter'
Melhem said One Centre Square couldn't have made it without a great staff.
He specifically mentioned Taylor, the concert booker. "He helped us out a ton," Melhem said.
"Our sound manager, John Rupp, was amazing. Our marketing guy helped us out a ton. Our security, our management, all our guys were amazing. My staff, they got us through it, and they are my family who got us through it.”
As much as he loves One Centre Square, Melhem said, he never considered continuing it as part of the new hotel or relocating it.
“It’s one of those things,” he said. “I ran my course, 22-23 years in downtown Easton. It just was time. That’s really all I can say as to that aspect.
“As much as it’s about the number, it’s [also] about being able to walk away and being OK with what you did. People are coming up to me and saying, ‘Oh, you just want to get out of Easton.’ I go, ‘No, that’s not the case.' Sometimes you just have to turn the chapter, start a new one.”
That new chapter is taking him to a new venture in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, where he plans to open a pizza pub similar to The Standard, he said.
"I thought I was going to be out of the business but actually fell in love with a place," Melhem, 49, said. “I can’t retire. I can’t sail off on my sailboat down in the Keys. I need the work.”
Taylor said the closing of One Centre Square will leave a hole for a venue that size in the Lehigh Valley. But he said others already are ramping up to fill the space.
He mentioned The Gin Mill in Northampton and Main Gate Night Club in Allentown.
“As one falls, others rise,” Taylor said.