PROSPECT-LEFFERTS GARDENS — A new cafe, event space and monthly concert series are coming to Erv’s on Beekman, staff there said, as the popular neighborhood hangout prepares to triple in size with a renovation.
The Beekman Place watering hole is expanding into a former laundromat next door, adding a large new room to the bar’s current cozy, hole-in-the-wall space, said Natalie Mishell, Erv’s event manager and a Prospect-Lefferts Gardens musician who has big plans for the new spot.
“I see Erv’s as a communal social hub of Lefferts Gardens,” she said. “I see it as this place where everybody feels very at home [and] where people have a chance to bring ideas and their talents to our community.”
By day, the new Erv’s will serve as a restaurant, coffee shop and hangout space, she said, with a multi-purpose, rearrangeable room designed to host anything from yoga classes to book clubs to a weekly currently ongoing farmer’s market pick-up through the local food distributor Farmigo.
Erv's bar on Beekman Place, right, is planning to expand into a former laundromat located next door, pictured at left. (Photo credit: DNAinfo/Rachel Holliday Smith)
By night, the space will return to the “vibrant, social nightlife scene” familiar to Erv’s customers, with regularly scheduled events including a comedy night, literary reading series (Sundays at Erv’s), “movie Mondays” and a live music concert series curated by Mishell.
That event, Erv’s Sings on Sundays, kicked off in January with a slate of mostly Brooklyn-based performers. Mishell, a folk-based singer-songwriter, played the first concert; last month’s event saw a mix of local musicians with qualities of David Bowie, Janis Joplin, Amy Winehouse and Bob Dylan, she said.
The new event space and restaurant area — set to be complete next month — will be connected to the current Erv’s bar by a curtained partition, she said, to maintain the intimate feeling of the small space, something regulars had worried would be lost in the expansion.
“That was a lot of people’s concern like, ‘Oh my God, you’re going to ruin Erv’s vibe. It’s supposed to be small,’” she recalled. “Well, it’s still going to be that, there’s just going to be a lot more opportunity for other things.”
Erv’s on Beekman is located at 2122 Beekman Pl. off Flatbush Avenue in Prospect-Lefferts Gardens.
