Origin, a new downtown LA dance venue, bets on a rave revival

Origin is a new indoor-outdoor nightclub and live music venue taking shape on a quiet Arts District block at the foot of the 6th Street Bridge in downtown Los Angeles. Its founders, the promoters Roni Mehrabian and Cyril Bitar, are betting that a booming dance music scene can bring clubbers back to a district that has not recovered the trade it had before the pandemic.

The building will be familiar to Los Angeles ravers. The former Lot 613 was a semi-permanent pop-up used by various promoters over the years, and Mehrabian remembers seeing Tale Of Us and Solomun there early in their careers. Its owners approached the pair about building the space out into a full club.

Mehrabian is blunt about the obstacle. "People will be like, I don't go to downtown anymore, it's so sketchy now," he said, describing broken-into cars and friends who moved out of high-rise buildings. A thriving venue in the Arts District, he argued, would revive business and foot traffic and make people feel all right about being there again.

The design is by Marc Dizon, who worked on the late Brooklyn Mirage in New York, Spotlight in Hollywood and Hakkasan in Las Vegas. The plan keeps a moody warehouse feel, with Blade Runner named as the mood board, a top-flight sound system and a roughly 1,000-capacity room, plus an open-air patio that can host DJ and band sets. Bitar said the patio was his first priority, because the modular layout lets a daytime community event turn into a separate show inside at 11pm.

Booking will be done in house, which the pair present as the point. "Most venues are ran by these big dance music conglomerates, and there's no room for smaller promoters," Bitar said. Bitar has run the Minimal Effort party for years, and between them they have two decades of Los Angeles events behind them.

City Councilmember Ysabel Jurado, who represents downtown, has set up a public safety and hospitality task force and floated dedicated entertainment zones that would make it easier for nightlife venues to open. Small venues, she said, create jobs, support local artists and help make streets feel safer in the evening. Downtown has seen other openings, including Pacific Electric in Chinatown and a revamped Bar Franca, though the Arts District lost the much-loved Resident.

The pair were eyeing late summer for opening, with a block party closing Imperial Street for dancing. Our electronic hub carries the rest of the dance coverage, including Hard Summer at Hollywood Park and the ARC festival in Chicago. Luminate named dance and electronic the fastest growing US genre of 2026.