What was Smashboxx?
Some Scottsdale addresses have had more nightclubs than others, and 7419 E. Indian Plaza has had a lot. It’s on the plaza just south of Camelback Road, in the middle of Old Town’s bar district, and since 2008 it has held at least six different rooms.
The best-remembered is Smashboxx. Promoter Chad Landau and a few veterans of the Pussycat Lounge opened it on November 4, 2010, as a lounge and video bar. It rarely charged a cover and had a video booth called the Hotboxx, and New Times’s Best of Phoenix named it the best new nightclub of 2011. It threw its last party on May 2, 2014.
Before it, the room was Lyte Lounge and then Howl at the Moon’s dueling pianos. After it came BLUR, the Blind Dragon karaoke lounge and, since 2022, 50 Shades of Rosé. Next door was Crown Room, an older red-lit lounge that Landau rebuilt as Dollhouse in 2011.
The tenants of 7419
Lyte Lounge & Bistro, 2008–2009. It opened in the spring of 2008 and closed in March 2009, while it was being sold. That was the spring Scottsdale’s clubs were closing one after another: SIX, Sugar Daddy’s, Maloney’s and Pink Taco all went the same year.
Howl at the Moon, 2009–2010. Lyte’s former operator, Robert Burghart, joined the venture that brought the dueling-piano chain into the space on October 16, 2009. It lasted about six months.
Smashboxx, 2010–2014. Landau billed it as a lounge and video bar, and in 2012 New Times described a cheerful “brodeo” crowd and the Hotboxx booth. By then Landau owned the club next door too. Smashboxx closed after a party with the DJ Jack Beats on May 2, 2014; the owners promised a new concept “next fall.”
After. BLUR, from Jonathan Wechsler and G.R. Boone, ran from December 2014 to December 2015. The h.wood Group and Innovative Dining Group opened the Blind Dragon, a karaoke lounge, on January 26, 2018. 50 Shades of Rosé started as a pop-up and opened for good in August 2022.
Crown Room and Dollhouse, next door
Crown Room was there first. In May 2005 New Times described an upscale lounge of plush couches, dim red light and expensive drinks, with a Thursday night of house, techno and drum ‘n’ bass sold as dance music “without hip-hop.” Owner Troy Shane renovated it in 2009. It closed in August 2011, and on October 20 Landau reopened it, after an $800,000 makeover, as the Dollhouse Cocktail Lounge.
The sources, and a correction
Main sources: a run of Phoenix New Times stories from 2005 to 2018, mostly by Benjamin Leatherman, on Crown Room, Lyte, Howl at the Moon, Smashboxx, Dollhouse, BLUR and Blind Dragon, and its Best of Phoenix listings; WhatNow on 50 Shades of Rosé; and directory listings for the address.
What’s unsettled:
- Crown Room’s address and opening year. It was on Indian Plaza by 2005, but no source we’ve found gives its street number.
- NV Lounge and Blue Note Cellar. New Times lists them among the space’s earlier tenants without dates.
- Smashboxx’s owners in 2014. Landau by the earlier stories; New Times guessed Full Moon Management when it closed.
- Blind Dragon’s closing and whether anything opened between it and 50 Shades of Rosé.
- The rosé bar’s address. WhatNow printed 7914, a transposition; listings give 7419.
A correction elsewhere on this site. Our bars note listed “Crown Room, then Smashboxx” at 7419 as one address with two closings. They were two clubs side by side, and the 7419 room’s chain ran Lyte, Howl at the Moon, Smashboxx and BLUR. The note has been corrected.
Why it matters
Indian Plaza is where Old Town’s club district churns fastest. One address went through six concepts in fifteen years, each with a new name and owner and usually promising something new, and most lasted a year or two. Smashboxx, at three and a half years, was one of the longer-lived. The spot it ended up as, a rosé bar that started as a pop-up, shows how much the district has changed since then.