Redevelopment squeezes Tallinn’s alternative music scene

Tallinn’s alternative music venues are under pressure from redevelopment and rising costs, ERR commentator Silvia Urgas writes, warning that the city could lose spaces for music outside the mainstream.

Club Hall opened in 2017 in the Noblessner waterfront district. Within a few years, people were already questioning how long a nightclub could remain there. The district has changed markedly over the past decade, and residents who have bought expensive sea-view apartments may object to bass vibrating through the night, Urgas writes, even though the club was there before them.

The landowner, BLRT, has for years been reported to want to build a kindergarten on the property. Under the latest plans, Hall would be redeveloped as a multifunctional cultural centre, with a concert hall suited to classical music. A smaller room would remain a nightclub, and restaurants and cafes would occupy the lower floor. The kindergarten is planned for a smaller adjacent building.

Although the original building is no longer set to be completely demolished and the club is reportedly expected to continue operating, Urgas says the renovated cultural centre would be very different from the old Hall. If the plans go ahead, she argues, the neighbourhood’s gentrification could be considered complete.

Queer club Hungr, which operated in the same building, has also just closed. In the same week, demolition began on a grey building in Tallinn’s Telliskivi quarter, which once housed, among other businesses, the bar Suhe. Suhe has since moved to the Manufaktuuri quarter and has been open there for a second year. Urgas writes that the demolished building will be replaced by an office building, restricting access to a place that was previously open to everyone. She says hopes that Telliskivi might again produce a music scene or a legendary venue like Sveta, Hungr’s predecessor, may now have to be abandoned. The continued existence of Bar IDA, she adds, is a small miracle.

With the number of young people falling, high VAT on concerts, inflation and money repeatedly taking precedence in Tallinn’s planning, Urgas says it is remarkable that any alternative concert venue or club remains open. The city’s two current hubs, she writes, are Kopli, centred on Paavli Cultural Factory, and Ülase in Kristiine. Both have faced years of pressure from property developers and the possibility that their old buildings could be demolished.

Urga argues that cultural funding and music-export support should also help preserve places where less mainstream music can be made and heard. Otherwise, she warns, commercial properties could replace one another while concert tickets become affordable only to people who do not work in culture and music.