Music

Dragons' Den's Michael Wekerle bought the El Mocambo and doesn't plan on turning it into condos

by Mark Teo

While the El Mocambo has had its share of struggles, we were saddened when news leaked that the revered venue was shuttering. The Chinatown-Kensington haunt, which was owned by Sam Grosso and 99 Sudbury’s Marco Petrucci, had been on the market since the spring—but no one seemed to be interested in buying the ElMo. To our dismay, its iconic neon sign was listed on eBay. Grosso announced a farewell show. We were resigned to the worst.

But today, we received a nugget of good news via the National Post: Reportedly, Michael Wekerle, of Dragon’s Den fame, swooped in and purchased the ElMo. Even better? He isn’t planning on turning the space into the El Mocambo Luxury Hard Lofts. Even better still? He seems to be intent on keeping the ElMo open as a music venue. According to the CBC, the deal will be closed in January 2015.

Though there’s no saying when the venue will reopen. “I think it’s [Wekerle’s] intent to keep it going as a music venue — which is good, everybody wants that,” Neil Warshafsky, the real estate broker for the venue, told the newspaper.

The keys will be handed to Wekerle onstage tonight at a Light of Day benefit show. Here’s what they tweeted.

As praise poured in, he tweeted a response seemingly indicating that the ceremony will happen at 9 p.m. tonight.

We don’t yet know if Wekerle also purchased the venue’s palm tree sign—the results of the eBay bidding war never surfaced, though Grosso has stated that he hopes the sign ends up at the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame. (We personally hope it’s resurrected at one of these 18 places in Toronto.) Either way, we’re glad to hear that a piece of Canadian music history lives on—and maybe, the El Mocambo 2.0 will actually host hip-hop shows.