The University plans to buy and demolish the nightclubs Trax and The Max in order to use the nearby property as a staging area for construction on expanding the University Hospital complex.
After six months of negotiation, the University has reached an agreement with Word Merchants Ltd. to buy the half-acre property near University Hospital containing the two side-by-side clubs for approximately $1.2 million.
The Board of Visitors approved the property's purchase at its Saturday meeting. However, the contract probably will not be finalized until summer, University Spokeswoman Louise Dudley said.
The land will be used as "support space" for a $58 million hospital expansion, said Jules Levine, associate vice president of the health system. The expansion will involve adding five operating rooms and renovating the existing nineteen, as well as expanding the hospital's heart and radiology centers.
The two clubs - adjoining beige, barn-like buildings next to the railroad tracks on 11th Street and a block off Main Street - both have been popular hangouts for University students in recent years.
Trax hosted live rock music from 1982 until its closure last summer, making it the longest continually running music venue in Virginia. The club often played host both to local bands and to nationally prominent acts, such as Blues Traveler and Ben Harper. Dave Matthews Band fans knew it as an early venue for the Charlottesville-based musicians.
Trax closed in July after a Florida entrepreneur purchased it with hopes of reopening it as a venue for bands playing Top 40 music.
The Max holds weekly country line dances, which draw crowds of University students.
"I'm going to be really disappointed" about The Max's closure, second-year College student Joyce Lin said. "It's a nice place for students and people outside the University to get together and dance. It's a different atmosphere than you would get anywhere else."
James Morris, the owner of Word Merchants and the current owner of Trax and The Max, declined to comment on the sale.
Construction probably will begin in late summer and take at least two or three years, Levine said.
After construction is finished and the property no longer is needed for a staging area, the University will find another, long-term use for the Max/Trax property, he said.
The coming project represents the second major expansion of the current hospital, which was built in 1989 to replace a previous facility. There probably is room for one more major expansion, he added.
"Anytime you expand something in an urban area, which is what we have around the hospital, it's always difficult," he said. However, "If you do good planning, you always plan for expansion, and that's what we did," he added.
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