‘We didn’t see it coming’: Music venue The Jade loses its second home
Thirteen years after the original Jade Monkey was demolished, its owners are hunting for a new venue while its current Flinders Street home is set to be taken over by a non-profit backed by millions in government funding. A former Premier sharing his views.
There’s a sense of history repeating when Zac and Naomi Coligan talk about the imminent closure of their long-running live music venue The Jade.
“We didn’t really see it coming, to be honest,” Zac tells InReview. “But it’s not a massive surprise at the same time.”
Next month the Coligans are set to farewell The Jade’s current home on Flinders Street – a heritage-listed 1863 rectory adjoining the deconsecrated St Paul’s Anglican church on Pulteney Street – after negotiations to renew their lease fell through.
“The business has been doing really well, we’ve actually clawed our way back after Covid and have got back to a pretty good position,” Coligan says of the bar and performance space, which hosted over 70 performances during this year’s Adelaide Fringe across 22 productions, and dozens more across the year.
Such is The Jade’s contribution to the city that when the state government passed legislation in 2024 to protect live music venues in the wake of the ‘Save the Cranker’ campaign, it included The Jade on a proposed list of Designated Live Music Venues.
“We’ve always paid our rent, there’s been no dramas.”
Until September 2025, when the Coligans say they were initially told their lease would not be renewed. They were later offered an extension at a significantly higher rent – a figure they say was financially unsustainable for an independent venue.
“It’s definitely disappointing. It’s the classic thing of, unfortunately, when you don’t own the space, own the building that you live in, this is what happens in this city,” Zac says.
He speaks from experience. The venue is itself a reincarnation of the Coligans’ earlier business The Jade Monkey, which was forced to close in 2012 after its original mid-19th century building on Twin Street was earmarked for demolition to make way for the Ibis hotel development next door.
The fate of the original venue – whose former footprint is now the site of a bitumen car park – sparked a community campaign with thousands of supporters.
“There was a big outcry,” Coligan recalls. “We’ve been through it once before – we didn’t instigate any of that, it just sort of happened. People got up in arms on our behalf.”
Many key initiatives in Adelaide’s recent support for live music and the late night economy can be traced to the fallout from the loss of The Jade Monkey and other venues like the original Tuxedo Cat, from the introduction of Small Bar Licenses – leading to a wave of venues like Pink Moon Saloon and Udaberri – to the establishment of the Music Development Office, and Adelaide’s designation as a UNESCO City of Music in 2015.
For a time, live music found unexpected champions at the highest levels of government. Former Premier Jay Weatherill says the plight of the original Jade Monkey was brought to his attention by “young advisers in my office who still attended night clubs.”
“Unbeknownst to me there was a significant community debate kicking off on social media about the future of the Jade Monkey,” Weatherill tells InReview from London, where he now serves as Australian High Commissioner to the United Kingdom.
“The more we looked into it, the more we understood the significance of live music to South Australia, both historically with so many great acts like Cold Chisel, The Angels and in a contemporary sense with artists like Hilltop Hoods, Sia.”
It was with the support of the Weatherill government that Coligan initially secured the Flinders Street property, which was pitched alongside the establishment of the state government-backed St Paul’s Creative Centre in the church next door, housing Music SA, the MDO, and other creative organisations
“They put a lot of people onto the case for us at the time, it was kind of fascinating,” Coligan says of the former government’s support. “They really were trying to help.”
Coligan says having the MDO and Music SA next door was a “great fit”.
“We approached the owner together back in the day when we first started, and they took over the main area and we took over the manse,” he says. “They were fantastic neighbours.”
The Jade’s second act still took work: Coligan had to invest significant time and resources to turn a semi-enclosed courtyard next to the manse into an acoustically sound performance space – including installing a permanent roof. Initial concerns from nearby residents, including Bethlehem Lutheran Church a few doors down, also held up liquor licensing approvals.
“It took us a year to get our licence – that was the big battle that we faced when we moved in, because we had the church, and a group that was representing residents in the area.”
Coligan says that St Paul’s previous incarnation as the nightclub ‘Heaven: The Return’ had left the neighbourhood understandably “gun shy” of venues – but since moving in “there have been no dramas”.
Things changed after the Malinauskas government ended its lease at St Paul’s in 2023, with then-Arts Minister Andrea Michaels citing issues with the building’s accessibility and the rise of independent creative spaces like The Mill.
It sat empty for around a year before Youth Inc – an independent secondary school aimed at “young people (aged 17-24) that do not flourish in a mainstream school setting” – arrived to turn St Paul’s into its city campus.
Now, the Coligans understand that Youth Inc is in final talks to take over the former Jade site.
Youth Inc’s website pitches itself to aspiring “creative artists” and “cultural trailblazers” – and has previously hosted student performances at The Jade.
In an emailed statement, Youth Inc principal Fred Heidt told InReview Youth Inc was currently “in the throes of negotiating a lease for the premises previously operating as ‘The Jade’”.
“Our intention is to incorporate the new tenancy into our existing operations which are adjacent and connected to The Jade,” he said. “We envisage using the space for music performance, hospitality and events on a day-to-day basis, and retaining the space for public events after hours.”
According to recent filings, Youth Inc receives 95% of its revenue — $5,601,381 in 2025/26 — from government funding. The Coligans say there is no way they could compete with an institution with that level of funding.
"This situation highlights how vulnerable independent community spaces are."
“Providing a space for live music, the arts and community events is a labour of love, not a high-profit enterprise,” Naomi says. “We have no issue with the school itself, but this situation highlights how vulnerable independent community spaces are.”
Even after losing two Jades, Zac and Naomi aren’t ready to pack it in. They’re intent on finding a new, third space, despite the search proving even more challenging than in 2012. After “fervently looking” for around a year, Zac says they’ve yet to find anything suitable in the CBD or further afield.
“There seems to be lots of places closing down, and more vacant spaces, but appropriate places for doing everything you need to survive in this climate… there’s not really much around unfortunately. There might be some pubs for sale, but that’s not something that’s easy to just take over.”
While the 2012 closure made waves, the announcement in January that The Jade’s lease would not be renewed met a quieter response. Coligan says that after the successful campaign to save the Crown and Anchor a year earlier, he wasn’t surprised that the wider community struggled to rally all over again.
“It’s been different this time,” he acknowledges.
“It was on the back of the Crown and Anchor – I think people are a little bit hardened to hearing about places closing down.”
As for the government’s list of Designated Live Music Venues? It has yet to be formalised — and is geared towards noise complaints and redevelopment, not a venue’s existing operators being shown the door.
On Monday InReview contacted the Minister for Arts and the Minister for Education and the City of Adelaide for comment on the situation at Flinders Street, and was told the state government was not aware of any issue at The Jade. Yesterday, the Minister for Arts announced a $400,000 ‘Venues Activation Program’ to support 13 remaining city venues, many of which appeared on the draft list.
For now, the Coligans will farewell The Jade with an afternoon gig on November 22 with their own longtime band The Sea Thieves – launching a new single recorded in the very building they’ll vacate at the end of the month.
Then, the search will resume for The Jade Mark III.
“We’ve done this for 24 years,” Zac reflects. “This is what we do.”
Want to see more stories from InDaily SA in your Google search results?
- Click here to set InDaily SA as a preferred source.
- Tick the box next to "InDaily SA". That's it.