When I broke the news about the Paradox closing, it sounded like it was a big bummer, right? Seattle's all-ages community is going to lose another venue, and that can never be good--even with the Vera Project doing so well in its new digs, even with the Brick House in Ballard back to hosting shows. Exclusively all-ages spaces are few in this city, and losing one sucks, right? Damn right.

Well, I'm happy to say that losing the Paradox isn't going to be as hard a hit as originally thought. The Paradox, as a space, is going to be missed, but all the hard work behind the venue is still going to run strong--maybe even stronger than before.

Bubba Jennings and Jeff Bettger (who currently do booking and promotions at the U-District venue) and the rest of the volunteer staff are going to carry on the Paradox legacy with a new nonprofit business, Paradox Theatre Productions (PTP).

"We want to work with everybody in the community," says Jeff about the exciting new development. "We don't want to fight against any clubs or promoters. We want to be a force that helps the arts community."

The production company will work with various venues in the city to book and promote shows (still all ages). Nothing has been made concrete, but the two have scouted out a few possibilities, like the Vera Project and the Miller Community Center, as alternative venues to work with.

And the production company is just one piece of a bigger puzzle. "PTP will be a department of the Artists' Reformation Project [ARP]," Jeff says. Jeff and Bubba are launching the latter project under the mission statement "Promote the arts and empower artists."

According to Jeff, "Other departments of the ARP include the studio [which is currently housed at the Paradox], a record label, and a magazine called Bandoppler, which will hopefully evolve into a small publishing company."

Bubba and Jeff have been knocking around these ambitious ideas for the past year or so. The closing of the Paradox was just the motivation they needed to take that big step and make the ideas reality.

"The music community is oftentimes greedy out of necessity," says Jeff. "It's not like anybody's trying to rip off artists, but to make money they have to. We would just like to do something that would enable people to make music and do their art without having to constantly tour and eat ramen noodles."

That's where Jeff and Bubba hope ARP will come in to turn things around.

"Right now nothing's really happening," Jeff says. "It's hard. But we are an official nonprofit business that is no longer subsidized by anyone, so it's moving forward. Everything I say is real--we are doing these things. We just have to wait to see what opportunities present themselves in the future to see how far we can take this." MEGAN SELING

megan@thestranger.com