THE JUMP
ARTS & CULTURE
TUNING UP TWO RIVERFRONTS Long-awaited music venues open in downtown and Newport to bring back live concerts. —SARAH M. MULLINS
Cincinnati has become a destination city for music and entertainment over the years, attracting some of the hottest musicians to Riverbend in the summer months and a wide variety of acts to the Aronoff Center, Taft Theater, Memori- gion didn’t previously have a venue offering inal Hall, Madison Theater, Bogart’s, and other door and outdoor space and accommodating the halls. Despite this venue abundance, a gap for mid-size crowds that certain acts desire. Fans ofmedium-sized acts remained in the region—a ten travel to Columbus or Louisville for concerts niche being pursued by two brand new venues, that don’t play here. “You start bringing in these the Andrew J. Brady ICON Center and its adja- middle-sized acts that a lot of times will play in cent outdoor stage at The Banks downtown and other markets,” says Scott Stienecker, CEO of the PromoWest Pavilion at Ovation in Newport. PromoWest Productions, which developed the Michael Smith, president of Music & Pavilion. “You’ll see the whole market of CincinEvent Management Inc. (MEMI), a Cin- nati just have a new energy to it.” cinnati Symphony subsidiary, says the ICON The Newport venue holds 2,700 fans for Center started with the Hamilton County indoor events and up to 7,000 for outdoors Joint Banks Steering Committee’s request for proposals. “For decades, concerts occurred in municipal auditoriums and arenas as a side product of the core purpose of an arena,” says Smith. “It might have been built for hockey or basketball or a sports purpose, and concerts were a filler product. We were very interested from the standpoint of filling a need in the marketplace and in the entertainment industry, specifically music-centric facilities that are in the 3,000- to 5,000-person range with Stages Are Set PromoWest year-round capacity.” Pavilion at Ovation (top) and the The Cincinnati and Dayton reAndrew J. Brady ICON Center 16 REALM FALL 2021
shows. The ICON Center holds up to 4,500 indoors and 8,000 outdoors at the ICON Festival Stage at Smale Park. Both venues have officially opened for business, though the pandemic resurgence has the owners constantly re-evaluating capacity, mask, and vaccination rules. Both Smith and Stienecker report lots of eager fans and excitement from bands to begin performing for crowds again. “People are ready to get out,” says Stienecker. “We opened early in the summer in Columbus [Express Live! in the Arena District], and not only were the tickets selling well but the bar tabs were high. So people are wanting to get out and they’re wanting to have fun.” Early shows at PromoWest Pavilion included The Avett Brothers and The Killers, while the ICON complex hosted Foo Fighters outdoors and St. Vincent indoors. “Our projections are good,” says Smith. “The artists we expected to be interested are very interested. This is a cutting-edge, super high-quality facility, and it’s fun to be in position to attract the kinds of bands that maybe would have skipped over Cincinnati before.”
P H O T O G R A P H S BY ( T O P ) D AY O F F C I N CY / ( B O T T O M ) C A R L I E B U R T O N
