Black Creek Assembly

Brown brick facing Weston Road

The low brown brick building at 131 McCormack Street camouflages itself among warehouses north of St. Clair Avenue West, in the industrial fabric of The Junction. It does not seek a club facade: it is a warehouse of about 20,000 square feet, high ceilings, and a raw floor that, since March 2022, Lands Black Creek Arts and Culture—with Andrew Hale as interlocutor before the city—operates as Black Creek Assembly. The venue presents itself as an assembly space for live music, dance, fashion shows, and cinema. The electronic audience cites it as much by the name as by the address.

The warehouse that absorbs the underground

Toronto lacks medium-sized venues where a warehouse rave can fit without theater seating or a tiny bar. This warehouse filled that gap. Promoters and collectives use it almost every weekend for techno, drum and bass, British bass, and long nights. Sojourn Festival took it to the extreme: in 2024 and 2025 the compound was reconfigured with interior dancefloors and a patio for a BIPOC and LGBTQ+ gathering of the local scene, with Ben UFO, Hudson Mohawke, Chippy Nonstop, BAMBII, and Juan Atkins. The local press described the venue as a discreet warehouse turned, for three days, into a festival.

There are two rooms that open together or separately. The sound system is not fixed: it changes with each rental and each production. That is part of the character of the site: it is not a nightclub with a house PA, but a warehouse that promoters dress up for the night.

Catwalk, drone, and the rest of the floor

The same floor serves for Fashion Art Toronto—a 200-foot catwalk over the warehouse—, for volume masses by Sunn O))), and for comedy. That hybridization is not an extra: the operator defines itself as an arts and culture project. From Monday to Wednesday the assembly space is ceded to artists, shoots, and neighborhood events, often without charge, between commercial dates.

Temporary permit in industrial zone

South McCormack remains zoned as industrial employment. The Toronto Committee of Adjustment authorized the use of Entertainment Place of Assembly expiring on July 31, 2027. In May 2026, the city council issued an assembly and bar license to Hale Hospitality Group Ltd. The venue continues to program—Embrace, bass, electronic tours—while the paperwork catches up to the calendar. There is no stable business schedule: it opens according to event, in an industrial estate where volume is tolerated better than in the center and where one arrives mainly by bus along Weston Road.