Tuesday, April 07, 2009
Elmwood Park gets nomination for amphitheater
Consultants say such an entertainment venue would thrive better at a downtown site.
Drawings courtesy of Red Light Management, SPEC Technologies and Associates
Related
Full presentation
- Click here to view the entire amphitheater presentation (Powerpoint file)
Previous coverage
- Red Light Management was expected to unveil design concepts
- Roanoke to study worth of amphitheater
- Portsmouth amphitheater has big tent, but not-so-big crowds
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Another long-running Roanoke debate took another twist Monday when a nationally renowned group of consultants recommended Elmwood Park as the best location to build an amphitheater.
The group, led by Red Light Management -- which runs the Charlottesville Pavilion -- recommended Elmwood Park over the former Victory Stadium site on Reserve Avenue because of cost, ease of parking, topography and a "synergy" with other downtown attractions such as museums, restaurants and the farmers market.
They estimated that an amphitheater to seat 5,000 people -- 3,000 in covered seating and 2,000 on the lawn -- could be designed and built for $12.2 million, versus $21.3 million for Reserve Avenue.
But in a national recession and with three other, high-dollar capital projects on the horizon -- Countryside Golf Course, renovations at Washington Park pool and the Roanoke City Market Building, which is slated for a discussion as early as later this month -- council members were skeptical about how soon an amphitheater project could actually get under way.
Vice Mayor Sherman Lea said he expected some city residents would be delighted by the colorful architectural renderings, with the amphitheater's design based on the Mill Mountain star. But he warned the consultants: "You're going to hear some, 'Not now, not now, not now' because of where we are, because of the economic picture."
Ken MacDonald, director of venue management for Red Light, further dampened matters when he responded to a question by suggesting the amphitheater would generate lots of spin-off spending but probably couldn't pay for itself.
Councilman Court Rosen noted the council had only hours earlier given tentative approval to a 2009-10 budget proposal that reduces or eliminates many city services.
"I really do hope someday we can have a venue like this," Rosen said. "Unfortunately we just finished cutting $7.5 million out of our budget."
Red Light Management's presentation represents the continuation of a controversy that reaches back to the epic fight over Victory Stadium. The "For the City" ticket of David Trinkle, Gwen Mason and the now-resigned Alfred Dowe swept the 2006 city council elections on a political platform that included the demolition of Victory Stadium and the construction of an amphitheater in its place.
The vote to tear down the stadium came just before they took office. Then, just before his one-year anniversary as a council member, Trinkle helped push through a 4-2 vote to site an amphitheater on Reserve Avenue despite recommendations earlier that month by Knoxville, Tenn., consultants to place it in Elmwood Park.
The issue bled into the 2008 council elections, with Lea among those championing the downtown Elmwood site. Since the hiring of Red Light Management, Trinkle has said he will abide by whatever the group recommends, and on Monday he repeated that after hearing the group's endorsement of Elmwood Park.
David Burke of Grimshaw Architects said the plan for Elmwood Park "really does show a kind of synergy that this site can make with surrounding cultural institutions in the city," such as the Taubman Museum of Art and the farmers market.
The management recommendation states that the Elmwood site "provides the compact, urban venue which we believe is most appropriate for the Roanoke market and can allow us to replicate the success we have seen with our other venues. ... We feel that this site can best accommodate a mix of community programming and national concerts that will keep the venue calender full and give the City the best return on its investment."
Cost played a role in the recommendation as well. The Reserve Avenue site would require demolition of the National Guard armory, dumping thousands of cubic feet of fill to provide sight lines to the stage and flood-proofing of the venue. Consultants said the Elmwood Park site is already shaped for an amphitheater and wouldn't require nearly as much site work.
Red Light Management was initially hired for $120,000 to conduct a study of only the Reserve Avenue site, but that price went up when Elmwood Park was added to the mix.
The presentation was repeated a second time for the public later Monday evening. It's now up to the council to decide whether it wants to proceed with more detailed engineering and architectural work for the amphitheater.
Or the council may choose to shelve the study for future consideration.
In other business Monday, the council also received a briefing on a proposed extension of the Lick Run Greenway north to Peters Creek Road, as well as a route that would link the Roanoke River and Tinker Creek greenways.
The council will hold a public hearing on adding the Lick Run proposal to its greenways plan later this month.
It instructed city officials to move forward with work on the proposed link for the Roanoke River and Tinker Creek greenways in hopes that they might be able to obtain federal stimulus money for the project.
