New Knitting Factory, new faces: 'We've never seen a year like this'

BOISE, Idaho (CBS2) — The Knitting Factory in downtown Boise is back and better than ever.

If you remember, the venue caught fire last year, shutting it down for six months. Since re-opening, General Manager Gary Pike says he’s been seeing new faces walk into the new and improved Knitting Factory.

“As soon as you walk in. You can see the difference, you can hear the difference,” Pike said.

In three months, the venue has had 53 events and concerts. Half of them have sold out.

“With that many sold out shows already. We’ve never seen a year like this in our past as far as the attendance level,” Pike said.

But the one hundred-year-old building has some history, not all pleasant. A fire damaged 60 percent of the venue last September.

“It was devastating to have a fire. Luckily it was in here when we were working on the building when it was closed, no one got injured,” Pike said.

Pike says the silver lining, is a brand-new venue.

“This gives us a chance to redo some of the things we’ve always wanted to,” Pike said.

Everything has been changed from the ground up. Floors, lights, sound system. And the most crucial, air conditioning to keep one thousand people cool.

“The flow of the room is a lot better since we redid the bar, we redid our balcony so there’s a lot more room in here than what we had before,” Pike said.

And it's not just the facility, Pike says their talent buyer has really up’d their game.

“Every night when you come to the Knitting Factory it’s a different band on stage, it’s a different type of music it’s a different type of crowd to see that,” Pike said.

Whatever gets you moving, the Knit has it.

“We have our salsa dance night, this has been going on for seven years. It has grown so big that we branched it off and we have a spin off, our reggaetón dance nights as well. We have our EDM dance nights called THUMP that we do once a month as well,” Pike said.

Pike tells CBS 2 there's always something to improve and there's actually some big New Year’s Eve plans in the works.

Upcoming events can be found on their website, click here.

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