Mac Rating: 5.00 | Votes: 1 | Date: 03/07/2026 00:33:00

Portland, Maine's legendary Asylum was demolished and reborn twice the size. Aura at 121 Center Street, in the heart of the downtown peninsula, opened in April 2017 after a 9.1-million-dollar project that razed and rebuilt the building that had housed the Asylum nightclub since 1997 - the WBRC-designed reconstruction adding two storeys, a balcony level and state-of-the-art production, and doubling concert capacity to about 1,000. The result slots precisely into the gap in the city's venue ladder - between the 500-capacity clubs and the 1,800-seat State Theatre - and the 24,500-square-foot building works every angle of it: a main concert floor with balcony seating for 144 plus standing room, a downstairs venue for dance nights, a VIP lounge for private gatherings, and Aura's Sports Grill serving lunch, wings and game-day screens independent of the show schedule. The booking book runs rock, country, hip-hop, electronic, metal, comedy and tribute acts - up to 100 concerts a year - alongside weddings, benefits and business events. The ownership story adds the local colour: founders who opened Asylum in 1997 with no club experience outlasted every competitor that launched alongside them, then bet the building itself on Portland's growth as a food-and-arts destination. The Old Port's restaurant blocks sit five minutes east, the Cross Insurance Arena is around the corner, and the venue's survival-by-reinvention has given Maine's biggest small city the mid-size room its touring calendar needed. The rebuild's technical package - a hung PA, generous rigging capacity and proper load-in - put Portland on routing sheets that used to skip from Boston to Halifax, and the venue's sports-grill frontage keeps the lights on between tour dates. Note for travellers: this is Portland, Maine, not Oregon - a confusion the box office fields weekly - and the Center Street address sits in the compact downtown grid where the Old Port, the Arts District and the ferry terminal are all within a fifteen-minute walk.