What it is
The Van Buren is a concert hall of about 1,800 capacity on West Van Buren Street at the western edge of downtown Phoenix, built inside what was once a car dealership. The building went up around 1930 as the Phoenix Motor Company showroom, to a design by Lescher & Mahoney, the local firm that also drew the Orpheum Theatre and the Hanny’s building, and later traded as the Dud R. Day Motor Company; it then sat through decades of downtown’s decline until two Phoenix investors bought it in 2015 and restored it, bowstring trusses and all. It opened as The Van Buren on August 23, 2017, with Cold War Kids, and Live Nation, a partner from the beginning, took full ownership in 2021. The calendar is dense: touring indie rock, pop, hip-hop, metal, electronic and comedy, most nights of the week in season.
Why leave Scottsdale for it
Scottsdale has no rock club. Our live music note is honest about this: there are saloons with house bands, a casino showroom, jazz in two hidden rooms and an 850-seat theater for touring names of a certain age, and that is it. The acts in the middle of a national tour, the band your kid will not stop talking about, the comedian whose special you watched last month, play Phoenix at The Van Buren, 25 minutes from Old Town. It is also simply a good room, with sound and sightlines that most mid-size halls in the country would envy, in a building worth looking up at.
The practical version
Check the calendar and buy ahead; the good shows sell out. Doors are usually an hour before the first act. Age policy varies by show and is on the listing. Twenty-five minutes from Old Town, 40 at doors on a weeknight. Paid lots around the building fill and empty slowly; take a rideshare or the light rail to Van Buren and Central and walk ten minutes. Bars on both levels, no real food, so eat before.
When to go
Whenever the band you want is playing; this is a show-driven room and the season is whatever the touring calendar brings, which in Phoenix means the heaviest months are October through April and a steady stream in summer, when the room’s air conditioning is a selling point. Weeknight shows are the easier ones to park for and leave; weekend shows draw the full house and the full lot. For October 2026 the calendar runs nearly nightly, from indie pop to death metal to a comedian, which is a fair picture of how it books.
What to do here
Get in line at doors if the mezzanine rail matters to you; it is the best spot in the room, with the stage and the trusses in one view, and it fills first. The floor is general admission and the sightlines from the back are better than in most rooms this size. Two bars, one on each level, keep lines short.
Eat first. Bacanora is five minutes up Grand Avenue and makes the best dinner-and-show pairing downtown offers; Roosevelt Row is a mile east for the casual version, and The Nash is there for a late set after an early show. Bitter & Twisted at Central and Jefferson is the cocktail stop if the night is not over.
With kids
Depends entirely on the show. All-ages dates are common and the mezzanine is the place to stand with a twelve-year-old; 18-and-over and 21-and-over dates are marked on the listing. The room is loud.
The neighborhood
The west edge of downtown, where Van Buren Street runs out toward the state Capitol and Grand Avenue angles off to the northwest. It is quieter and emptier than the core, with the Orpheum and the old city hall a few blocks east and the Grand Avenue arts strip a few blocks northwest. Walk to the light rail with a group.
The story
West Van Buren was Phoenix’s automobile row in the 1920s and 1930s, a stretch of dealerships and garages at the edge of downtown, and the Phoenix Motor Company’s showroom was one of its handsome ones, a wide clear-span hall under bowstring trusses designed by Lescher & Mahoney around 1930, the same years the firm’s Orpheum Theatre opened a few blocks east. The dealership later operated as the Dud R. Day Motor Company. When the car business moved to the suburbs the building went through the uses old showrooms get, and by the 2010s it was vacant, with the trusses intact under a dropped ceiling.
In 2015 Pat Cantelme and Jim Kuykendall, Phoenix investors, bought it for $2.2 million with a concert hall in mind, and a $250,000 historic-preservation grant helped return the facade and the roof structure to their original design. Stateside Presents, the promoter behind the Crescent Ballroom and Valley Bar, ran the booking with Live Nation as a partner, and The Van Buren opened on August 23, 2017, with Cold War Kids, filling the gap between Phoenix’s 500-capacity clubs and its arenas. In April 2021 Live Nation bought out the majority owner and took full control; the calendar barely changed, and the room has since become the default Phoenix date for national tours at its size.
The Scottsdale connection
Scottsdale’s rock history is thin and mostly gone, a few 1960s and 1970s clubs and the odd Giants-season bar band, and the city has never had a room this size for touring acts; the closest it comes is the casino showroom at Talking Stick and the Scottsdale Center for the Performing Arts, both of which book an older demographic. The result is that Scottsdale’s own music fans have always driven to Phoenix and Tempe for shows, and The Van Buren is where that drive ends most often now. Our nightlife note is candid that Old Town’s bars are the after-party, not the show.
Getting there
From Old Town, west on McDowell Road to 7th Avenue, south to Van Buren Street, then west to 4th Avenue; the venue is on the north side of Van Buren. The paid lots around it are small and fill before doors, so a rideshare to the door is the sane choice, and the Van Buren and Central light rail stop is a ten-minute walk east for anyone coming from Tempe or the Camelback corridor stations. Our getting around note has the late-night train schedule and the rideshare math back to Scottsdale, and the late-night food note has what is open when you get there.