Matt Rios of Maker House says the past two years of renovating and running the community space has involved 60 to 80 hours of work a week for him, but the journey has been rewarding. Despite all of that work, the team has announced that on April 11, the venue, restaurant, coffee shop and bar will shut down.
“It’s been two really, really hard years of work,” Rios says. “But it’s been so worth it.”
With free events ranging from tango to live local music to LARPing events to craft circles to EDM hula hoop dances to one of the country’s largest Super Smash Brothers gaming tournaments, Maker House spent its time opening up to the community and providing a space for anyone to do any kind of event that they wanted.
“Maker House belongs to the community,” Rios says. “The community built it.”
The process of renovating the historic Bates Mansion that Maker House is in was a long one involving adding new flooring and ceilings, installing bars and much more. One of the rooms has a large mural that had to be completely restored, since the wall had a tree and other greenery growing through it as well as salt deposits seeping through when it rained.
After renovations, the team struggled to make a return on investment on a community space that hosted almost only free events. While getting people to come in and eat during the day was always tricky, Rios says the community would always turn up for those unique events, which likely wouldn’t have a home elsewhere. That’s why people grew to love the space and looked at it as a second home, particularly in the nerd community, according to Rios.
“Everyone’s always felt welcome here,” he says. “We’ve all learned the sheer power of networking from this project. Every time we needed anything, we could just ask the community and we would always find something.”
Now, they’re asking fans of Maker House to stop in on Tuesday, March 3 from 9 a.m. until 6 p.m. to record small videos to say what they loved about Maker House and why they’ll miss it. If you can’t make it in then, you can also record them and post with the hashtag #opensource&out to be included.
The Opensource & Out party will be Maker House’s last hurrah on Saturday, April 11 where all of the logos and information on starting and running a community space like Maker House will be released to the public.
“If people want to start something new, we want to help,” Rios says. “This type of space can be built by anyone and that’s why we’re opening it up. If you want something like this in your community, though, you have to support it.”
Lisa Roden of Maker House and Art Fire says that from March 11 until April 11, the space will be open daily from 6 p.m. until 2 a.m. for a month-long goodbye celebration.
“This space used to be an exclusive gentlemen’s club where if a woman came in, she would have to order off of a women’s menu,” she says. “It’s kind of funny that we turned it into something that was so open to everyone.”
The mansion itself will be turned into a wedding venue in the future in conjunction with Ron Abbot of the forthcoming Johnny Gibson’s Downtown Market.
This article appears in Feb 26 – Mar 4, 2015.
So sad to hear.
Dang!
I am iterally heartbroken. The Maker House was mny home away from home, a place that enrished my life by meeting new people and providing new things to try.
Total bummer…
Sign of the times…a great place like this closes, and probably another Frat Boy ‘Sup Bra’ douchebag club will open to cater to the little shitbags from Scottsdale down here on daddy’s money.
Liberals, there’s an economic lesson in this. Learn it, and then you’ll see the fallacy of your ideological and economic positions.
What a brilliant observation, Carlos Castro. So…using that reasoning and the observation that 90% of startups fail in the first two years, that must mean that only 10% of startups are being founded by conservatives. What’s wrong? Conservatives can’t spell “entrepreneur?” Also, you are apparently unaware of the fact that the founders of Maker House have had a number of successful startups and that they are working on new projects right now. Anyone who is a real “job creator” knows that not every venture will succeed – even ones with brilliant concepts and a dedicated core of customers, like Maker House. All your post has proven is why “conservative thought” is an oxymoron.
Yikes, I accidentally made some guy and or some peoples day more difficult at the Maker House today by making this announcement. For that you have my apology this was not my intention.
Thanks,
Urban
Too bad. I heard great things about Maker House and wanted to visit one day. So sorry to hear about the closing.
This is really too bad, I remember about a year ago I stumbled across the maker house and Matt gave me and my friend Echo a tour . We both thought it was a great place , had I b known it was struggling fiscally I would have done more to help! Cheers to those who supported such a rad cause and good luck to the founders in future endevours.
This amazing place has been my refuge for the 16 months that i worked there. I have never met more industrious and creative people willing to take a chance and restore something important into the citizens of Tucson. It was not a lack of care or false ideology that shut the place down. We were a large space with a large rent, it takes time for businesses to grow especially when they are created for the benefit of the community rather than for profit. At a certain point it was just not feasible to continue. All of the owners, previous and current, and all of the employees have put their hearts into creating this space. In becoming opensource, our hope is that the maker mentality can carry on, even though the original space will be gone.
Just have to wonder about Tony Ford’s role in all of this.
Maker, an unfortunate branding choice for a novel community space.
And, ROI is not a term usually associated with opensource.
Sure sounds like the community need is still there. Just that this model didn’t work.
Good luck in the future.
Recognize the effort and dedication towards restoring and promoting a venue. Kudos on your efforts to utilize the space to engage the community through a more eclectic variety of events. But a restaurant this was not and I gotta say the menu offerings and food quality was seriously lacking for the price point. Obvious inexperience and disorganization. In future ventures, owners may want to reconsider incorporating food beyond simple bar snacks or at least have a more actualized concept for a menu and a kitchen staff that can actually execute it. Otherwise, stick to simple cheap bar food, you can get that stuff at costco too!