The owner of the Iowa City Yacht Club is going to purchase Gabe’s, a live music venue in downtown Iowa City for the past 25 years.

“We are very excited for this opportunity to join the forces of two live music venues just down the alley from each other, says Yacht Club owner Scott Kading. “This makes sense on so many levels and has been a blast so far. We are still trying to get our arms around the schedules, but up until now, it has been nothing but positives.”

Kading will still maintain the Yacht Club and its booking and long time Yacht Club manager, Pete McCarthy, will manage the day to day operations at both venues.

Taking over Gabe’s will offer more options, Kading says.

“It’s a bigger room with a clean slate,” Kading says. “You can do anything up there from rock to punk to metal to bluegrass to bigger jam bands that don’t fit on the Yacht Club stage. Plus the feedback from the community has been tremendous. We have had people hug us because they are excited in what it can become.

“There are a lot of things we didn’t even consider when we were involved in the negotiations. After we hauled out several truck loads of junk and really cleaned the place, we realized that this is one of the best beer gardens in town. Plus we brought back the pool table, have all new beer lines and a huge selection of beer.”