ARTS CULTURE

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, Memorial Hall, Madison Theater, Bogart’s, and other halls. Despite this venue abundance, a gap for medium-sized acts remained in the region—a niche being pursued by two brand new venues, the Andrew J. Brady ICON Center and its adjacent outdoor stage at The Banks downtown and the PromoWest Pavilion at Ovation in Newport.

Michael Smith, president of Music & Event Management Inc. (MEMI), a Cincinnati Symphony subsidiary, says the ICON Center started with the Hamilton County 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 year-round capacity.”

The Cincinnati and Dayton region didn’t previously have a venue offering indoor and outdoor space and accommodating the mid-size crowds that certain acts desire. Fans often travel to Columbus or Louisville for concerts that don’t play here. “You start bringing in these middle-sized acts that a lot of times will play in other markets,” says Scott Stienecker, CEO of PromoWest Productions, which developed the Pavilion. “You’ll see the whole market of Cincinnati just have a new energy to it.” The Newport venue holds 2,700 fans for indoor events and up to 7,000 for outdoors Stages Are Set PromoWest Pavilion at Ovation (top) and the Andrew J. Brady ICON Center 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.”

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