A new event venue is now officially open in Buchanan, providing the surrounding area with a state of the art location for live entertainment, community gatherings, and private celebrations.
The Loading Dock is located 325 East Front Street inside the historic former Clark Equipment building. Its founder and owner, Randy Hendrixson, tells us the idea grew out of his years in event planning all over the country.
“I’ve been in events for over 25 years all over the country doing a host of different types of events, and after quite a few years of doing events on the road, we kind of figured out the dos and the don’ts of doing events and what venues had done to either make mistakes or do things great,” Hendrixson said. “So, we took all of those things that we learned and brought it together and decided to build The Loading Dock right in our own space.”
Henrixson says the location in Buchanan is near several bustling communities and just one turn off the exit. With a capacity of 475, he says the area lacked something like it.
“In fact, there’s not really a venue that can accommodate that many guests nearby at all. The next closest would be the Upton Hall LMC in Benton Harbor and the Century Center in downtown South Bend. Otherwise, we have the largest occupancy for events in the area.”
Hendrixson says the new Loading Dock represents a $2.1 million investment. A lot had to be done to turn the 110-year-old Clark Equipment building into an event space.
“We started on the project about four years ago, demoing all of the unnecessary steel, electrical, masonry, really you name it. We had a large central vac system we had to remove in order to get it back to its bones.”
With the ribbon cut and the facility now open, Hendrixson says the Loading Dock can host concerts, weddings, corporate functions, fundraisers, and more. It’s also hosting its own events.
“Our space is a little bit unique in that we do our own internal events. We also use the space as a rental space. So somebody like a corporate entity or bride and groom can rent the space and do a private event. But also when we’re not doing private events or what we call hybrid events where we’re open to the public, but there are our own events such as like a trivia night or karaoke or live music. Then we also have open pub hours. So we have a small cafe set up and restaurant/bar. We kind of do our thing, noon to 10 p.m. Wednesday through Sunday when we’re not doing events.”
Already, the Loading Dock hosted Chicago alternative rock act King of Mars this past Friday and more shows are coming up.
“We’ve got a bunch of karaoke nights coming up. You can visit our website, TheLoadingDock.events, for a list of all of these things. We have live music coming up on August 27. We’ve got a really awesome Art of Home event coming up on Saturday, August 29. You can buy tickets for that online as well. We have some really awesome keynote guests that are coming into town. It’s a really amazing event that even South Bend would be lucky to have, let alone Buchanan.”
The Loading Dock also has a partnership with the Laugh Lounge out of Niles for it to host some of its larger events in Buchanan.
Hendrixson says everyone can follow The Loading Dock’s schedule at TheLoadingDock.events. He also invites everyone to stop in.
