Goldenvoice to Launch ‘Club Darc’ Warehouse Dance Series at SF’s Pier 48

On a quiet stretch of San Francisco’s waterfront, across McCovey Cove from Oracle Park, a historic warehouse is about to become one of the city’s biggest dance floors.

Goldenvoice, the concert promoter behind Coachella and San Francisco’s Portola Music Festival, is launching a new electronic-music series called Club Darc inside Shed A at Pier 48. The seasonal run of DJ-driven, single-stage shows is scheduled on select weekends from Feb. 27 through May 16, in partnership with Giants Enterprises, the events arm of the San Francisco Giants.

Billed as a “seasonal club experience,” Club Darc marks one of the most ambitious nightlife bets to date on the city’s redeveloping Mission Rock neighborhood and continues a push to turn industrial piers into major music venues. It also arrives after several years of high-profile noise complaints surrounding Goldenvoice’s Portola festival at nearby Pier 80, making the new series an early test of how far the waterfront can be pushed as an entertainment zone.

A warehouse-to-club transformation

Goldenvoice describes Club Darc as a warehouse-to-club transformation: a single main stage, 21-and-over entry and what the promoter calls “immersive production” in a roughly 5,800-capacity space. Pier 48’s Shed A is marketed by the Giants as part of San Francisco’s largest flexible event venue, with more than 200,000 square feet across two sheds when fully activated.

“We’re very excited to bring yet another new dance music experience to the Bay Area with Club Darc,” Danny Bell, Club Darc’s founder and a senior vice president and talent buyer at Goldenvoice, said in a statement. “Shed A at Pier 48 is the perfect venue to bring this vision to life — we’re going to transform the warehouse into our ideal club environment.”

Lineup and ticket details

The first wave of artists leans heavily on established and rising names in house and techno. Dates announced so far feature headliners including Peggy Gou, Michael Bibi, The Martinez Brothers, Armand Van Helden, Chris Stussy and Mau P, alongside acts such as DJ Tennis going back-to-back with DJ Seinfeld, a DJ set from Neil Frances, Ben Sterling, Silva Bumpa and Miguelle & Tons. Additional shows and performers are expected to be announced for later in the spring.

General ticket sales for all confirmed nights are scheduled to begin Jan. 28 at 10 a.m. Pacific time through the series’ official website, with a presale registration already open.

Part of the Giants’ year-round entertainment push

For the Giants, Club Darc is part of a broader strategy to turn the area around Oracle Park into a year-round destination for entertainment and hospitality, even when the team is not playing. Giants Enterprises already programs non-baseball events in and around the ballpark, including concerts, corporate gatherings and special events at Mission Rock and Pier 48.

“We’re incredibly proud to see Pier 48’s Shed A evolve into a true music destination on San Francisco’s waterfront,” Sara Grauf, a senior vice president with the Giants, said. “Club Darc marks an exciting opportunity to activate the historic Pier 48 with vibrant and diverse new programming.”

Mission Rock, the 28-acre district south of Oracle Park that includes Pier 48, is being developed by a partnership of the Giants and real estate firm Tishman Speyer under a long-term agreement with the Port of San Francisco. The plan calls for roughly 1,200 housing units, office space, parks, retail and the rehabilitation of Pier 48 as an events hub, with new tax and lease revenue helping fund waterfront infrastructure.

The team has also been expanding its footprint beyond the ballpark. In 2025, a Giants-affiliated entity bought the historic Curran Theatre in Union Square, signaling an interest in downtown performing arts real estate in addition to waterfront venues.

Portola noise complaints loom over waterfront events

Goldenvoice’s move into Pier 48 follows its separate effort at Pier 80, where the company launched Portola Music Festival in 2022. That festival — which remains active and is scheduled to return in 2025 — quickly became a flash point over how loud large-scale electronic music can be on the bay.

In Portola’s first year, residents as far away as Alameda and parts of Oakland reported low-frequency bass so strong it rattled windows. Alameda officials later asked San Francisco to discontinue or relocate the festival after two years of significant noise complaints, and the San Francisco Entertainment Commission fielded hundreds of calls and emails tied to the event.

Goldenvoice acknowledged misjudging how sound would travel over water and, working with sound engineers and the city, adopted a series of mitigation steps. Those included reorienting stages, lowering allowable decibel levels, adding sound-absorbing structures such as acoustic panels and stacked shipping containers, and setting up real-time sound monitoring in San Francisco and Alameda. A subsequent analysis by city officials found a noticeable reduction in complaints, but East Bay residents have continued to raise concerns.

Club Darc will operate on a smaller scale and in a more enclosed environment than Portola. Shed A is surrounded by new and existing buildings in Mission Rock and sits closer to downtown than Pier 80, which is more exposed on the southeastern waterfront. Even so, the same agencies that regulate Portola — the Entertainment Commission and the Port, among others — are likely to scrutinize Club Darc’s permits, hours and sound controls, given the recent history of cross-bay noise.

A nightlife bet in a shifting city

Goldenvoice has framed the new series as part of a long-term effort to anchor electronic music in San Francisco. The company says Club Darc will “further establish the city as a leading international music destination and cultural hub for dance and electronic music,” building on Portola and other waterfront shows.

The series also lands at a time when city officials are leaning on nightlife and cultural programming to help revive a downtown battered by office vacancies and shifting work patterns. A long-standing analysis by the city’s Controller’s Office estimated that nightlife generates billions of dollars in local spending each year. More recently, City Hall has adopted a strategy to “transform downtown into a leading arts, culture and nightlife destination,” and state legislation has allowed San Francisco to pilot new “entertainment zones” where outdoor events and alcohol service can be expanded.

At the same time, several smaller, independent venues have closed or announced plans to shut down in the last few years, including the South of Market LGBTQ+ club Oasis and the long-running Slim’s space, later operating as Yolo Nightclub. Promoters and artists have debated whether the rise of large, corporate-backed events helps or hurts the broader ecosystem by drawing new audiences while competing for limited discretionary spending.

For Mission Rock, Club Darc is expected to bring thousands of visitors on nights when the Giants are not playing, potentially boosting nearby bars, restaurants and breweries that have opened in the neighborhood’s first phases. For the Giants and Goldenvoice, the series is an early proof-of-concept for how a rehabilitated Pier 48 can function as a regular music venue rather than an occasional special-event site.

How that experiment plays out — with fans, regulators and neighbors on both sides of the bay — will help determine whether a once-industrial stretch of shoreline becomes a permanent fixture on the international club circuit or a cautionary tale in the limits of waterfront nightlife.