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After 40 years of rock and roll, T.T. The Bear’s Place will reportedly close this summer


Long-time Cambridge rock club T.T. The Bear’s Place celebrated its 40th anniversary in the fall of 2013. Less than two years later, its finale is rumored to be planned for this summer.

Our sources tell Vanyaland that the Central Square music venue will close in July, though no set date has been established. Back in November, the building was purchased by Joseph and Nabil Sater, owners of the adjacent Middle East Restaurant And Nightclub complex, and our spies say a tenable working agreement between the two camps was unattainable.

T.T. The Bear’s owner Bonney Bouley is still deciding what to do with the room’s liquor license. We are also told that a last-minute deal between the Saters and Don Holland, owner of the ManRay nightclub that lived across from T.T.’s before closing in 2005, also fell through.

It remains to be seen what happens to the 330-person rock club.

“My intention is to keep T.T.’s,” Nabil Sater told Vanyaland in a December interview. “We love the way it is, and it’s going to get better. I don’t know how they feel, but we always work together.”

Boston Restaurant Talk reached out to the Middle East this week, but were met with a “No comment” by the Saters.

T.T. The Bear’s Place hosts about 250 live shows a year, as well as the weekly new wave party Heroes (winner of Best Dance Night in the 2014 Boston Music Awards, with its resident DJ and founder, Chris Ewen, nominated for DJ Of The Year), the annual Rock And Roll Rumble (with nine shows each April, most recently won by Zip-Tie Handcuffs), and various other dance nights and cultural events, including flea markets and other fund raisers.

As stated above, the final night of T.T. The Bear’s has yet to be established, though end of July looks like the target date. The last show on its online calendar is a July 30 party with the Dead Trains, Peachpit, Idiot Genes, and Lady Bones.