Downtown Cleveland is about to score another win for events venues.
Bedrock, the developers behind the $2 billion Riverfront plans south of Tower City Center, announced on Thursday it’s planning to construct a 6,200-seat entertainment amphitheater on the southeastern-most edge of the site.
That venue, planned to neighbor the Cavs training facility currently being built, will be run by Live Nation. It promises, Bedrock said in a press release, an “intimate” venue “big enough for national touring acts while maintaining an artist-audience connection.”
Live Nation Ohio President Michael Belkin, who oversees Blossom and the House of Blues, framed the new venue as a notch in reversing the unfortunate trend of bands forgoing Cleveland to play elsewhere.
“We’re giving artists another reason to play Cleveland,” he said, “giving fans more of the shows they want close to home.”
“This investment not only honors the city’s rock ‘n’ roll roots,” Belkin added, “it positions Cleveland to compete with other regional markets for the biggest tours in the country.”
As planned, it will be slightly larger than Jacobs Pavilion, which is operated by AEG and can hold 5,000. And would harken back to the days when the Tower City Amphitheater stood nearby and competed for shows.
It joins a list of planned and speculative new venues around town, a trend some local concert industry experts have worried about given the state of the market.
In December, City Hall announced that a music venue had been presented to the Northcoast Waterfront Development Corporation, the nonprofit taking charge of development around that slice of the lakefront in advance of the Browns’ departure to Brook Park. (Where the Haslams have planned an outdoor event/music venue.)
The same air follows Cleveland State’s plans to re-do its Wolstein Center, Cleveland Pro Soccer’s hope for a soccer stadium on the south end of the Gateway District, Public Hall’s rebirth as a locus for basketball, and Cosm Cleveland, a mega-screen sports complex, to fill in the parking lot just north of Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse.
Mayor Bibb himself framed Bedrock’s venue plans as another reason to tout his downtown tax-increment financing plan, which funnels what would be normal tax payments on new construction in the city’s core into a fund marked for public space improvements.
“A new outdoor music venue along the Cuyahoga riverfront reflects the type of resident and visitor experience that we want here in downtown Cleveland,” Bibb wrote, adding Bedrock’s plans will help “strengthen Downtown, drive economic impact and advance our Shore-to-Core-to-Shore strategy.”
No date or design plans have been released as of yet.
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