Goodnights Comedy Club has found a new home in the Village District
Goodnights Comedy Club — a longtime fixture of Raleigh’s night-life and entertainment scene — will open a new venue in The Village District after a short stint at the shopping center’s former K&W cafeteria.
Shows will continue through July at Goodnights’ West Morgan Street location as construction continues on a new space adjacent the former Village Underground. The club, which opened in 1983 as Charlie Goodnights, has hosted a who’s who of legendary comedians, including Ellen DeGeneres, Jay Leno and Jerry Seinfeld.
The new space at 401 Woodburn Road will open in the fall or winter of 2022, according to Goodnights. After its current location closes July 31, the club will set up temporary shop in the former K&W cafeteria at 511 Woodburn Road.
“Goodnights is more than just a building,” said Reven MacQueen, Goodnights’ senior manager of development and operations, in a press release. “The energy, talent and community will be carried into both the temporary and permanent locations. We’ll still have the space to showcase everyone from big-name headliners to our best locals, and with all the same enthusiasm we have always given our comics.”
The new location will models its aesthetic after Philadelphia’s Helium Comedy Club, according to Marc and Brad Grossman, the brothers behind five Helium locations across the country who bought Goodnights in 2013. Its underground space, with “low ceilings, moody lighting and an intimate atmosphere,” will feature a larger showroom than Goodnights’ original venue.
“One of our goals in upgrading Goodnights was to keep the club in Downtown Raleigh and somewhere fun with cultural significance, enhancing the entire experience of attending a show with us, making ourselves even more accessible to the community,” Brad Grossman said in a release. “We felt comfortable with this new location because of its proximity to the Raleigh Underground, as well as its underground setting, which we believe is necessary for comedy to be experienced properly.”
The Cameron Village Underground was Raleigh’s live-music hub from the early 1970s to the mid-1980s. Everyone from then-on-the-rise touring acts like the Go-Go’s and R.E.M. to local heroes the Fabulous Knobs, Arrogance and PKM made their way through the venerable string of venues.
“The former Raleigh Underground was a unique complex that was home to many music venues, nightclubs, and shops,” Grossman said, “and Goodnights is aiming to reestablish this culture.”
The club’s original location at 861 West Morgan St. is slated for redevelopment, The News & Observer previously reported. Local real estate firm HM Partners has filed plans with the city to build a 401-unit apartment building, two courtyards and about 9,000 square feet of retail space on the Goodnights site.
