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Major concert club planned for near North Station

The ‘Big Night Live’ venue will occupy a floor of the Hub on Causeway Street complex. Gensler

The area around North Station could soon be a new hub for nightlife, and not just when the Celtics, Bruins, or concerts are filling TD Garden.

Big Night Entertainment and Live Nation plan to open a concert venue next fall at the Hub on Causeway project, now under construction alongside the Garden. Called “Big Night Live,” it will accommodate an audience of about 1,500 for a live performance, 2,000 people in all, and bring a high-end nightclub vibe to a neighborhood historically known for its sports bars.

This will be the biggest venue yet for Big Night, a Boston-based nightlife company that runs a collection of bars, restaurants, and clubs in the Seaport District, Downtown Crossing, Foxborough’s Patriot Place, and Foxwoods Casino in Connecticut. Big Night principal Ed Kane said he hopes the venue will “transform” the concert business in Boston.

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“We really think we’re going to re-invent the way people look at live music here,” Kane said. “We want people to come in and just have a great experience.”

The $25 million concert hall, with a 200-seat Mexican restaurant attached, will occupy a 40,000-square-foot floor of the Hub on Causeway project. Images were not available Wednesday, but Kane described a multi-tiered music hall with a dance floor, extra-high ceilings, and large windows behind the stage that look out to the Zakim Bridge and Boston Harbor. There will be VIP seating and high-end service, with pricing — depending on the event — to match.

“We want a huge ‘wow’ factor,” Kane said. “We can make it a very, very special place.”

Kane said he envisions a wide range of acts — everything from country to electronic dance music to “high-end artists” playing small shows — and he hopes to piggyback off bigger concerts at the TD Garden by throwing after-parties and other related events. The club will fill “a void” in the market, he said, by offering a space for acts too big for The Paradise, on Commonwealth Avenue near Boston University, but too small to fill the House of Blues near Fenway Park. Concert promoter Live Nation will book acts and act as a partner on the project.

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“We are thrilled to have the opportunity to help bring a high-end talent showcase to Boston at long last,” said Don Law, president of Live Nation New England, in a statement.

Big Night Live will occupy part of the second floor of the Hub on Causeway, a 1.9-million-square-foot complex being built on the site of the old Boston Garden that will include a 38-story apartment tower, an office tower leased largely to Verizon’s Oath digital-media subsidiary, and a new hotel. Upstairs will be the new headquarters of cybersecurity firm Rapid7, and the building’s lower floors will also include a movie theater, a Star Market, and yet-to-be-announced restaurants and retail stores. Next door, Delaware North is building out a $100 million expansion of TD Garden, adding more bars and club space.

Bryan Koop, executive vice president of Boston Properties, which is co-developing the Hub project with Delaware North, said the music hall will bring a“unique-to-Boston,” feel to the huge complex.

“Big Night Live will further place The Hub on Causeway at the center of Boston’s most dynamic neighborhood,” he said.


Tim Logan can be reached at tim.logan@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter at @bytimlogan.

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