From Golden Harvest Cinema to the Imperial
The building at 319 Main Street opened in 1974 as Golden Harvest, a theatre that screened popular Chinese-language films. After the cinema fell into disrepair, it underwent a roughly $2.5-million renovation and reopened in 2007 as a multipurpose entertainment space, branded first as District 319 before being renamed the Imperial. It was a roughly 6,000-square-foot multimedia and event facility.
Ownership and the 2018 MRG Acquisition
MRG Group purchased the Imperial on July 6, 2018, with president Matthew Gibbons calling it "a perfect complement to the Vogue and the Biltmore," both Vancouver rooms MRG also operates. MRG pledged that the Imperial would keep taking live-music bookings, and BC Assessment had valued the property at roughly $2.5 million. The purchase read as a vote of confidence in live-music venues at a time when Vancouver had lost rooms like the Electric Owl and the Media Club to rising rents.
A Flexible Room for Concerts and Comedy
Configured standing or seated, the Imperial was listed at 700 standing and 280 seated, with 500+ in a live-music setup. It hosted a wide range of programming, from hip-hop concerts and touring bands to local album-release shows, stand-up comedy, podcast tapings, private events, and yoga sessions, with an onsite restaurant and catering and wheelchair accessibility.
Downtown Eastside Pressures and Going Dark
The Imperial sat at 319 Main Street, just south of the Main and East Hastings intersection on the edge of the Downtown Eastside. Its proximity to the Hastings Street encampment created mounting safety pressures, and in September 2022 the venue cancelled shows citing street crime in the area. The room later stopped taking bookings and went dark. Its operator, MRG Group, lists the venue as temporarily closed with no announced reopening date, and third-party listing sites mark it closed. As of 2026 the Imperial has no upcoming events and no working official website, and its former imperialvancouver.com domain has lapsed to an unrelated site.