Most of the people who visit downtown Pontiac mainly do so for one of two reasons – its vibrant nightlife or its festivals.

Common images that come to mind when thinking about downtown Pontiac are streams of young people bar hopping or long lines of thrill seekers waiting for a haunted house or floods of Metro Detroiters milling about during the Arts, Beats & Eats festival. Attractions like these make downtown Pontiac a Mecca for Metro Detroit entertainment.

“This is an ideal place to go to represent the tri-county area,” says Jim Terebus, co-owner of the Erebus Haunted House. “So many of the area’s major roads lead to downtown Pontiac.”

Clubs, breweries and haunted houses

Downtown Pontiac is anything but a quiet place on the weekend. The multitude of bars and clubs keeps hordes of young people partying well into the night. Some of Metro Detroit’s most popular clubs are in downtown Pontiac, such as Clutch Cargo’s, Tiki Bob’s Cantina and Tonic Nightclub.

Martin Coats started Tonic seven years ago and has been going strong ever since. Even though there is a lot of competition among clubs, he says, there are still a lot of people bouncing between them on newly paved streets and redone streetscapes.

“Pontiac has always had a vibrant nightlife and a great downtown district,” Coats says. “There have always been a lot of people in downtown Pontiac on the weekends.”

A cadre of bars and restaurants also line the streets of downtown to complement the clubs. Patrons crowd into new establishments, like the Boom Boom Room, and line up for well-established favorites, such as dueling-piano-bar JD’s Key Club or Bo’s Brewery.

Burgess “Bo” Young opened Bo’s Brewery in 1996. It is now Oakland County’s only microbrewery. He chose downtown Pontiac over several other Oakland County cities because he saw potential in the city’s vibrant nightlife. He describes it as a big place with a small-town feel where it’s easy to know regular customers by name.

“Downtown Pontiac is an historical area reminiscent of better days with the potential to recapture those days,” Young says. “It’s a place families can go and walk.”

It’s also a place where people can be scared out of their socks and it be seen as a good thing. Terebus’ haunted house is a big reason behind that. Erebus holds the Guinness World Record for the largest haunted house.

Terebus took a long-abandoned building that once housed everything from office space to a bowling alley at the corner of Terry and Water streets and turned it into a haunted house in 1999. Each fall it attracts thousands of people to downtown.

“They are lining up around the block — not the building, the block — to walk through Erebus,” says Sandy McDonald, executive director of the Pontiac Downtown Development Authority.

Food, festivals and entertainment

There are also lots of entertainment options beyond the clubs and bars.

The city hosts a number of festivals, with most of the major ones crammed into one month. During August, the city is solidly booked with events, such as the Woodward Dream Cruise, the Mexican Festival and Arts, Beats & Eats. Hundreds of thousands of people from across the Midwest crowd into downtown Pontiac for these events.

“There is always an entertainment venue that has something going on,” Terebus says.

The Woodward Dream Cruise is perhaps the biggest. Although the Dream Cruise stretches throughout Oakland County along Woodward Avenue, it terminates at the Woodward Loop in downtown Pontiac. The Dream Cruise attracts about 40,000 classic cars and 1 million people to watch them during the third weekend in August. The free event basically translates into a 16-mile-long car show filled with classic and custom automobiles celebrating car culture.

Another million people flood into downtown Pontiac for the Arts, Beats & Eats (www.artsbeatseats.com) festival over Labor Day weekend. About 200 musical acts perform on seven stages. More than 150 artists and 50 restaurants are also represented at the three-day festival.

Crammed between these two behemoth events is the Mexican Festival during the fourth weekend of August. It’s not as well known as Dream Cruise or Arts, Beats & Eats but still draws a large, diverse crowd, bringing in Latino acts from across the country.

“They do a three-day festival that is full of concerts, full of food and full of dancing,” McDonald says.

Phoenix amphitheater rising

Pontiac’s nightlife also has the possibility of becoming even more vibrant with the opening of two significant concert venues this year. The city expects to finish the renovations to the Phoenix Plaza Amphitheater this spring. At the same time a private developer is putting the finishing touches on the Crofoot Building renovation, turning it into a small concert venue.

Blair J. McGowan, owner of the Crofoot Building, is turning it into two corner bars, a pool hall and a small concert venue with a 1,000-person capacity. He says it will be compared to and compete with the likes of St. Andrews Hall in Detroit.

The Phoenix Plaza Amphitheater looks to bring in the biggest performance crowds. The $20-million project will refurbish the 25-year-old amphitheater at Saginaw and Water streets, upgrading the venue to 3,000 permanent seats and 3,000 more lawn seats. A canopy covers all of the seating.

City officials expect it to compete with other marquee Metro Detroit venues, such as Chene Park or DTE Energy Music Theater. Bringing in more — and bigger — events is also expected to bring more foot traffic to downtown, further enriching the city’s nightlife.

“It’s major,” McDonald says. “If you’re bringing in 15 performances a year and they bring in 3,000 people for not even sold out shows. Then at least 20 percent of those people will come to visit our restaurants, bars and clubs.”