Spot Lite and UFO Bar close at the end of June as owners leave nightlife

Two of Detroit's independently operated nightlife venues, Spot Lite in Islandview and UFO Bar in Corktown, will close at the end of this month.

Roula David and Jesse Cory, who own and operate both spaces, announced the closures on Instagram. "With a lot of thought and consideration, we have decided to close this chapter in our lives and move away from nightlife," they wrote. Spot Lite holds its last night on June 28. UFO Bar closes June 30.

Spot Lite opened in May 2021 at 2905 Beaufait St., in a former lumberyard. What they built from that shell was a multidisciplinary space: a bar, a gallery, a record store, a coffee shop, a coworking area, and a dance floor all running under one industrial roof. For five years, Spot Lite drew a consistent crowd to a part of Detroit's east side that rarely gets that kind of sustained creative attention. Cairo Coffee, a specialty coffee shop that operates inside the building, will remain open temporarily while it searches for a new location.

UFO Bar carries a longer history. The building at 2110 Trumbull in Corktown first opened as a bar in 1938. A new iteration opened in 2014 as UFO Factory, a dive bar with live music, arcade games, and artisan hot dogs that ran under original ownership for a decade. In 2017, a neighboring construction project damaged the building's wall and forced a temporary closure. The venue later reopened. By 2024, the original owners were ready to move on, and David acquired the business through a multi-year land contract, reopening the space as UFO Bar in August 2024.

UFO Bar's closure does not mean the building stays empty. It will reopen under new ownership as Detroit Vinyl Bar, a record store and cocktail bar. Details on that transition are expected in the coming months.

David and Cory spent five years operating two very different buildings in two very different neighborhoods. Spot Lite turned a former lumberyard into one of the east side's few late-night creative anchors. UFO Bar preserved a building with decades of bar history that could have gone a different direction entirely. The closures end that chapter. What Detroit Vinyl Bar and whatever follows Spot Lite become is still ahead.