Amphitheater Gets Site Plan
The site plan (.pdf) for the downtown Raleigh amphitheater was submitted this week and it reveals some more details about the facility. The site is the vacant lot to the west of the Raleigh Convention Center. This lot is not a simply “empty lot”, though, as it contains the service access for the center via a sweeping, curbed driveway though the property.
According to the plan, the road will remain intact, and the stage will be set just inside the road’s arc, facing the SE (toward Memorial Auditorium). Also it appears that small, portable men’s and women’s restrooms will be placed at stage right.
At this point it looks like the center will not be convenient for visitors needing to use the restrooms. The other problems that will plague this facility is acoustics. The shimmer wall and a parking garage, both hard surfaces, will be directly uphill from the stage. Perhaps the design could be improved by rotating the stage about 20 degrees to the south, with a bias toward the stage right side of the audience instead of the planned bias toward the stage left side of the crowd. This would flatten the angle against the opposing hard surfaces and drastically reduce reverb.
While the facility will be smaller and not as nice as Cary’s Booth Amphitheater, the site is not meant to be used for very many summers. The long term plan for the site is for convention center expansion.
We still need a clever name for the tent-covered amphitheater….!
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December 5th, 2009 at 10:11 pm
Bumbershoot Ampitheatre
December 5th, 2009 at 10:23 pm
With the stage facing SE, perhaps it will put to the rest any concern over noise from neighbors to the West.
December 6th, 2009 at 4:18 pm
“New…we still need a clever name for the tent-covered amphitheater”
I don’t think the Tent is in play any longer
December 6th, 2009 at 7:05 pm
The tent is no longer in play. This will be an open area.
December 6th, 2009 at 10:29 pm
“not as nice as Cary’s Booth Amphitheater”
I don’t think you can make that conclusion just yet. I think it will be a much different experience than Cary’s.
December 6th, 2009 at 10:53 pm
OK, I’ll go way out on a limb and say that a facility with temporary bathrooms and trailers for concessions will not be as good of a fan experience as it is at a permanent facility (otherwise, why did we spend millions of dollars building Walnut Creek?).
I am also concerned about water runoff. This design seems to cover the entire 1/4 wedge of the lot inside the access road with concrete. The only way for that water to go naturally is into the Convention Center access. This site plan doesn’t mention any enhanced water handling facilities.
No use of the “free” tent? Interesting. Does the City Manager know that it rains here on one out of three days in June and July?
This facility will have great sitelines, easy access, and fun things to do after events, unlike the office parking lots in Cary.
C’mon, Tico! You can do better. We all saw that the Marriott was going to be hideous, the convention center was going to be excellent, and that the City Plaza was going to be really uninspiring, but not bad. This amphitheater design isn’t rocket science.
December 7th, 2009 at 1:08 am
This thing sounds like a joke, not to mention a waste of money. Why can’t they just use City Plaza for concerts, like they used to for Alive After 5.
December 7th, 2009 at 10:44 am
Well, I think the reason is that there are many, many acts out right now that aren’t big enough for Walnut Creek. However City Plaza would be a terrible venue for somebody as big as Kings of Leon or the Indigo Girls (acts that played in Cary last summer). It’s OK for a day festical kind of thing, but the sitelines are terrible. City Plaza will be better suited for a couple of thousand (80s and 90s has-beens, local acts, etc).
What concerns me is that this project is kind of turning out like the Triangle Rail plan. Someone came up with the idea of putting a commuter diesel train on existing railways, and we could do up a whole local rail system for about $60 million, very cheap. Reality set in and we have a plan that exceeds a billion dollars now.
With this amphitheater we got a free tent structure from another city, but it needed a new canvas. No problem, we’ll just get a new canvas and throw it up on the vacant lot reserved for convention center expansion, right? Well, here we are with a fully graded, concrete terraced amphitheater that reportedly doesn’t even use the shell.
As it appears, there is absolutely no way this thing operates in the black, and it will cause Booth Amphitheater to also operate in the red. How about Walnut Creek? Their number of shows with a large crowd is at an all-time low, too.
December 7th, 2009 at 1:55 pm
How much would this place really impact Koka Booth? I wouldn’t think that much, what are the capacity differences and certainly the stage/equipment wouldn’t compare.
This may be a decent option for events like beer/wine festivals or cultural events/festivals.
December 7th, 2009 at 9:22 pm
So what your telling me is that either the city builds a temporary amphitheater or the lot will sit empty until they expand the convention center? I don’t get it. It may be 10 yrs. or more before that day comes, if ever. Why not just use some of the land @ Dix for a permanant amphitheater and sell the land adjacent to the convention center to a developer for another hotel?
December 7th, 2009 at 11:06 pm
well put Chad. The hill at Dix is an ideal place for an amphitheater… rather than a “heavy duty concrete” pad… not quite as conducive to a picnic atmosphere
December 8th, 2009 at 10:05 am
Chad said it right, but any Dix venue would upset the Boylan Heights residents, I think. Not to mention that the city leaders want to keep the crowds as close to the convention center and Fayetteville Street as possible. That way, they can talk about the successful revitalization of that area.
In my opinion, it makes sense to utilize an empty block, instead of letting it rot, or serve as a surface parking lot. There are pros and cons about turning this section into an amphitheater, but no “right” and “wrong”. I would love to see a larger project ending up there, something along the same lines with The Edison. Use 2/3 of the lot for convention areas, with 2 hotel high-rises on the top, and use the rest for a couple of mixed-use towers. It is doable, brings density and height and most of all traffic to an area that can benefit from it.
In the meantime, I do not expect this new amphitheater to awe people, but it will surely add a new element to our downtown. That area needs some activity, anyway, particularly since The Warehouse closed down.