A florist shop on the first floor of a parking garage became the busiest stage in Maine's largest city. Portland House of Music and Events - PHOME to locals - occupies 25 Temple Street on the edge of Portland, Maine's Old Port, a two-level, roughly 300-capacity venue that opened in June 2015 and programs live music most nights of the week. Founder Ken Bell built it as a successor to The Big Easy, the Market Street club he ran for nearly a decade until his lease expired in 2013 - a closure local musicians described as losing the emotional centre of the Portland scene. The new room doubled his old capacity, added soundproofing and a purpose-built stage in the 3,400-square-foot former flower shop, and opened with a ribbon cut by the mayor and a weekend of Maine acts: Doubting Gravity, Amy and The Engine and The Mallett Brothers Band. Bell partnered at launch with Jamie Isaacson, the promoter behind the long-running North Atlantic Blues Festival in Rockland, carrying over the blues-series bookings the pair had run at the Big Easy while broadening into rock, indie, funk, jazz, electronic and hip-hop. The layout gives audiences a main floor for standing, a mezzanine for elevated viewing, a bar and kitchen, and the quirk of direct covered parking - it remains the only Portland venue built into the ground floor of a parking garage, next to Nickelodeon Cinemas. In July 2022 Bell sold the business to Patrick Calabro, a former booking director for the Brooklyn Bowl venues in Las Vegas and London, who argued the room's size filled a gap in the market after the 550-capacity Port City Music Hall closed during the pandemic - the step between Portland's bar stages and the 1,000-capacity Aura. The venue's sweet spot is exactly that middle rung: national acts on the way up, regional draws and local headliners, in a city whose live-music profile has grown considerably faster than its venue stock.

Type: Theater / Concert Hall

Address: 25 Temple Street, Portland, OR, United States, 04101

Website: https://portlandhouseofmusic.com

Cover Charge: 1

Capacity: 300

Opening Date: 12/06/2015

Serves Food