EDMTunesOct 6, 20264 min read

Learn How Avra Jain Developed Factory Town into One of the USA’s Biggest Venues

Raffi Santosfor EDMTunesRead on EDMTunes

Before Factory Town was booking the biggest brands, event companies and artists in the world, dominating Miami Music Week and Basel celebrations and staying busy year-round, it was a mattress factory in Hialeah where about 20 percent of the space was usable. Avra Jain, the Vagabond Group co-founder who bought it in 2021, kept the walls anyway. A new profile in The Real Deal breaks down how she turned that shell into a 180,000-square-foot venue that now anchors Miami’s biggest party weeks.

From restored motels to a mattress factory

Jain made her name in Miami restoring 1950s motels along Biscayne Boulevard in Miami’s MiMo district, including the Vagabond Hotel, which she and her partners bought for $1.9 million in 2012. The Hialeah site came later. Terra’s David Martin and Michael Simkins bought the factory at 4800 Northwest 37th Avenue in 2018, the city council rezoned it for transit-oriented development, and Jain initially planned to work on the project with Martin. In 2021, the pair sold it to her for $10.5 million.

Instead of taking an acquisition loan, Jain brought in investors, including the owners of Club Space. David Sinopoli, Davide Danese and Jose Coloma Cano, friends of Jain’s, had been hunting for somewhere to throw large-scale events without constant neighborhood complaints.

“They said to me, ‘We need to find a place where we can make noise,’” Jain said. “Clubs have closed on the beaches, Wynwood, next to Space, so it was a really interesting challenge.”

Keeping the bones

Jain kept and reinforced the original walls, preserved the steel structures, hauled debris away by the shipping container and brought in 100 mature trees rescued from tree farms.

“Most people would have walked onto this property and wanted to knock everything down,” she said. “I saw the value in what was there.”

The paperwork mattered as much as the building. Hialeah officials knew Jain from her motel restorations, and she secured a 24-hour liquor license plus approvals that let the site host recurring music festivals without a new public hearing for every event. She told The Real Deal those approvals became as valuable as the property itself, since festivals book talent a year out and promoters won’t commit millions to artists, staging and production without predictable permits.

Insomniac signs on

Factory Town hosted its first pop-up events at the end of 2021, and by March 2022 Get Lost was taking over the entire lot for its 15th anniversary during Miami Music Week. In 2023, Insomniac signed a 10-year lease on the property worth more than $22 million, with two 10-year extension options, according to court documents cited by The Real Deal.

That partnership went to court in 2025, when Insomniac sued Sinopoli, Danese and Coloma Cano, alleging they concealed their ownership interest in the Factory Town real estate while negotiating the lease. The operators countersued, and the two sides reached a confidential settlement on June 30, with Insomniac keeping its commitment to the venue. Jain stayed out of the crossfire.

Five stages of house and techno

Much of the venue’s calendar runs as mini festivals around Miami’s big weeks, from Formula One weekend to Hocus Pocus at Halloween. During Miami Music Week, Factory Town has run five stages a night for five straight nights every year since 2024. The European house and techno brands that fit Miami’s taste keep coming back. elrow has thrown a party at every Miami Music Week there since 2024, and CircoLoco has hosted Factory Basel nights in 2024, 2025 and again this December. Jamie Jones brought Paradise in 2024 and 2026, Marco Carola‘s Music On ran from 2023 through 2025, and Drumcode has held a Miami Music Week slot three years running.

Beyond dance music

The calendar has stretched past dance music, too. FKA twigs brought her Body High live performance there in March with Eartheater. In September, Snow Strippers played with Bleood among the guests on the 19th, and Turnstile followed the next night with Mall Grab, Cold World and Collateral. III Points presented the FKA twigs and Snow Strippers shows, and its III Joints offshoot has taken over the grounds each April for the last two years, with Helado Negro on the 2025 bill.

What’s next

This year, for the first time, Factory Town hosted events prior to Hocus Pocus, featuring Sara Landry, Eli Brown, Fisher, Armin van Buuren and more. Later this year, Factory Basel runs December 2 to 6 during Art Basel, with Chris Lake, Solomun, PAWSA and The Martinez Brothers leading nearly 20 label and artist stage programs.

Hialeah’s slogan is “La Ciudad que Progresa,” the City of Progress. The officials who wanted Jain to bring a preservation project there ended up with a factory where the line forms before sunset and the dancing goes past dawn.