He wants Midnight & the Wicked to be a better Philly nightclub. He’s putting $8 million on the line.

Artem Ustayev, who grew up in Northeast Philadelphia after his family emigrated from Uzbekistan when he was a kid, said he was doing very well for himself in the health-care field with a business he founded.

“The truth is, I was making pretty good money and I was partying all the time,” he said. “I went to every club and I would give every club owner ideas. ‘You should try this or you should try that.’ And they’d always tell me, ‘Artem, that would never work in Philly.’ So one day when I combined all the ideas that I’ve been giving to people, I’m thinking, ‘That sounds like a really cool place. I should just build it.’”

Ustayev, 40, and his friend Josh Tourdot, 30, did just that. Ustayev sold his company and on Valentine’s Day 2019, they bought 1500 Lounge, a subterranean nightspot better known as Rumor, beneath Ocean Prime restaurant at 15th and Sansom Streets.

They started demolition but had to shut down during the initial months of COVID-19. Since restarting in November 2020, “we’ve been working ever since,” Tourdot said.

Just over three years later, it’s time for Midnight & the Wicked to emerge from behind the velvet ropes into your Instagrammable dreams with three bars, three lounges for drinks and comfortable conversation, and a dance club with lights, a DJ, tiered seating, and cubbies to stash purses and charge phones.

Factoring in the demolition (down to the studs), construction (some done offsite to spare neighbors from noxious fumes), upgrades to the building’s systems, and a tufted red velvet lounge chair (selfies!), Ustayev said they are now in for about $8 million.

“This project went a little bit out of control,” Ustayev said, winking. He emphasized that “no other financiers’ are involved.

This is the Roaring ’20s, not the Boring ’20s.

“I don’t want to say that the city doesn’t have nice places, but I wanted to do something that I think is gorgeous,” Ustayev said. “My thoughts were the 1920s. They were America’s splendor years. There was so much beauty everywhere you go — the architecture, the people, the way they dress, the drinks. A lot of times, we fantasize about this time and it’s like, ‘I wish I was born 100 years ago so I could enjoy that.’”

“But as we started to do stuff, our contractor started to show us more woodwork that he could do,” Ustayev said. “And we never said no.”

There’s also no shortage of velvet. The furniture in the building’s onetime bank vault is purple. Another room, the Crimson Theater, is done up in red. At the end is that red lounge chair, positioned beneath a glassed-in cabinet at the end that bears reproductions of crowns and other royal regalia, all created by a Russian artist for the project.

Even in Midnight’s early days, patrons are snapping impressive restroom selfies. Individual mirrors over the sink are backlit in such a way that they cast great lighting. By the same token, a long mirror in the women’s room is curved just so, to flatter the figure.

Midnight is the main bar, which has a stage and a piano at one end. Wicked is the nightclub, with a DJ booth, tiered seating, and full lighting. While Wicked is open Thursday to Saturday, the rest of the place is open seven nights till 2 a.m.

A lounge keeping those hours in Philadelphia?

“I know,” Ustayev replied, after noticing not a first set of raised eyebrows. “Everyone says that. They open on a Monday, and they’re like, ‘It’s slow. Let’s get out of here and wipe down.’ We’re not going to do that. We want to be consistently open. Say you have some friends visiting and they go, ‘Take me out somewhere on a Tuesday,’ you could say, “ I know exactly where we’re going. We’re going to Midnight because they’ll be open.’”

Also different: No public relations machine is driving Midnight, whose planning was as under-the-radar as its location. Ustayev said he invited a few friends to a soft opening last weekend, and it seemed as if everyone on the planet showed up. They had wanted to open in February after a few trial runs, but “I figured, ‘Let’s just go with it,’” Ustayev said. He’s put it out on OpenTable.

Though across from the rear of the staid Union League, Midnight now anchors one of Center City’s party blocks. The 1500 block of Sansom Street throbs with lines of customers for Ladder 15, Pulse, and Chika. Around the corner is Vinyl, a nightspot also with a cocktail lounge and live music.

“We’re not reinventing the wheel here,” Ustayev said. “We’re just making something that the city really wants.”