SCHENECTADY — After 12 years in Saratoga Springs and 45 years in business, The Comedy Works is moving to the Electric City.
Owner Tommy Nicchi, whose father founded the comedy club in Albany in 1981, has taken over operations at the former St. Mary’s Church on Eastern Avenue, which closed as a parish in 2009 and was converted to an event venue a decade ago by developer Sandra Vardine. In the spring, The Comedy Works will move into its eighth full-time location, a basement space in the church that previously was the restaurants Taj Mahal and Renaissance. The former sanctuary upstairs will operate as an event venue named Mary’s. Under a concession agreement with Vardine, Nicchi will run both spaces, he said.
The Comedy Works held its final Saratoga show in mid-October in its basement room at 388 Broadway, where it had been in residence since 2014 and the club’s main home since 2016, after it closed on Northern Boulevard in Albany following a four-year run. The Comedy Works will reopen in temporary quarters on the weekend of Nov. 20 at The Parlor at Schenectady Municipal Golf Course, which Nicchi also operates, with sets by comedian Sean Donnelly, who has performed on “The Late Show with David Letterman” and NBC’s “Last Comic Standing.”…