Mondays Dark, the acclaimed variety benefit show that’s raised more than $1.8 million for local nonprofits since its 2013 debut, has long been the crown jewel of the Space. Located just west of the Strip, the entertainment venue was specifically designed to house the twice-monthly charitable extravaganza, says venue and show founder Mark Shunock.
“But over the last eight or nine years that we’ve now been open, the Space has become much more popular than Mondays Dark,” says Shunock. “The Space is home to three to five events a week. It’s home to Alzheimer’s support group meetings, Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, kids classes, veterans learning how to play music.”
Community-focused programs like these have turned this building into something more than a place to have fun during a live performance.
On February 24, Shunock and the Mondays Dark team revealed plans to build the Space 2.0. In front of community members and officials including Nevada First Lady Donna Lombardo and Clark County Commissioner Michael Naft, they announced the first details of a $50 million community center which will house seven nonprofits dedicated to serving the needs of first responders, veterans, public educators, students, hospitality workers and entertainers.
Mondays Dark founder Mark Shunock and actress Annette Bening at the announcement of the Space 2.0 on February 24.
“It’s a pretty broad-stroke facility, but it’s the first of its kind in the country where very specific nonprofits will call the Space home, and they will provide services in the mental health space,” Shunock says. “In a nutshell, the Space will serve those who serve. … We get 40 to 50 million visitors a year to Las Vegas, and we do an incredible job at serving them. When those visitors go home, who serves those who serve? That is the mission of the Space.”
A call to action comes with the announcement. Shunock seeks to raise the $50 million capital to get the project off the ground. He shared that $2 million has already been donated. The facility is slated to open in 2028 at the corner of Polaris and Harmon, with the groundbreaking scheduled for one year from now.
As ambitious as it sounds, the project has been in the works for nearly five years. Two years ago, Shunock partnered with Clark County to acquire the acre-and-a-quarter parcel of land, located behind Aria and the Cosmopolitan. That land will soon become something of a “rockstar facility,” clocking in at 80,000 square feet, radically surpassing the original Space in size and resources.
“The business will operate in the same regard the Space has for the last nine years, just on steroids,” Shunock says.
The Space 2.0 will offer 10 therapy offices, four multi-purpose classrooms for everything from group therapy and yoga to rehearsals and seminars, TV and podcast studios, and two event spaces, one being sizably similar to the Space and the other expanding by 17,000-square-feet for weddings, concerts, fashion shows and other diverse forms of programming. The new building will have a 9,000-square-foot indoor-outdoor terrace and a 6,000-square-foot commercial kitchen.
More significantly, the Space 2.0 aims to transform itself into a one-stop shop communal hub. Mondays Dark will move into the new facility, along with Community Counseling Center; the Firefighter Behavioral Health Alliance; Life By Music, a nonprofit that provides music education programs to underprivileged children and veterans; CORE Academy, Powered by the Rogers Foundation, which helps students to achieve their potential; Public Education Foundation, which supports local teachers; and in keeping with the Space’s multifaceted mission, the national nonprofit the Entertainment Community Fund (ECF), which will support Vegas’ entertainers.
Bringing the 143-year-old charitable organization to Las Vegas is an absolute triumph for the Space. During the announcement Monday, actress Annette Bening, who serves as the chair of the board for the ECF, said a partnership with the Space 2.0 presents an “ideal opportunity to bring the fund to one of the entertainment capitals of the world … to entertainment professionals with a unique understanding of the challenges that a life in the arts brings.”
“They are the nation’s premier nonprofit providing services to everyone in entertainment, so actors, dancers, singers, but also carpenters, wardrobe, hair and makeup, ticket takers, ushers, directors, agents … you name it,” Shunock says.
Representatives of local nonprofits and other community members take the stage during the announcement of the Space 2.0.
In 2020, Mondays Dark livestreamed a six-hour telethon to raise money for crew workers and entertainers affected by the pandemic. The charity show raised $122,000, which the ECF stepped in to disperse. Word got out about what the organization was doing, and in the next eight months, more than $1 million was fed back into the local entertainment community.
Bening said that experience became the impetus for bringing the ECF to Las Vegas. Local industry workers have real needs, and the ECF aims to address them.
“We’ve got a team of people who are there dedicated to trying to make sure that people can get and maintain their health insurance. We also have a full curriculum of financial wellness classes that are available online, mental health support groups and resources, affinity groups, disaster assistance and much more,” she said. “We are looking forward to bringing these programs and services to a physical space, the Space 2.0, in a few years, and it would not be possible without the dedication of so many.”
During her speech, Bening expressed her gratitude to Shunock, who appeared choked up onstage. She also reflected fondly on her last gig on the Strip.
“I only worked in Las Vegas once,” she said. “We were shooting a movie called Mars Attacks. I was running across fields in the middle of the night with Jim Brown, Tom Jones, Danny DeVito, and we were also in the casinos. It was quite an experience.”
With the ECF now in place, our city’s most crucial industries will start to see the effects.
“The Space will now be an easy support mechanism for anybody in hospitality or entertainment,” says Shunock. “If you now own a restaurant, a nightclub, a venue, a theater, a publication, whatever you own, we want a back-of-house thing on your bulletin board that says, ‘If you’re not feeling well today, go to the Space.’”
As Las Vegas looks toward Sony Pictures building a billion-dollar studio in Summerlin, Shunock says the Space could check a big box for those workers, should they need assistance as well.
“Everybody needs access,” Shunock says. “Access is the key, and it has to be affordable and it has to be easy.”
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