Big changes planned for Jacksonville concert venues Florida Theatre, Ponte Vedra Concert Hall

Some big changes are coming to Jacksonville-area music venues in the next year or so, with a new concert hall coming to town and major renovations planned at two others.

Construction should begin in 2023 on a new venue in the Rail Yard District west of downtown and large renovation projects are planned at the Florida Theatre and Ponte Vedra Concert Hall that will force each to close down for several months.

The Florida Theatre project is planned for the summer and fall of this year and the Ponte Vedra Concert Hall work will probably start in early 2024, so the two venues won't be shut down at the same time. Gabe Pellicer, general manager of the concert hall, said having both closed at the same time would be bad news for area music fans.

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"That’s something we don’t want," he said. "We’re all in the same game. We spent years and years improving this market as a music destination."

New Rail Yard District concert venue

Plans were announced in early 2022 for a new 1,000-2,000-seat indoor concert venue in the Rail Yard District, across I-95 from downtown Jacksonville.

It's still coming, said Josh Billue, president of the company that will build and operate it, Marathon Live. Plans are complete for the venue and Billue said he's waiting for the rest of the Dennis + Ives project to get underway before he starts building.

"We're not a complicated build, when it comes down to it," Billue said. "When you’re building something, you don’t want to create a headache. We feel pretty good about where we are as a facility."

The venue still doesn't have a name — Billue said he plans to let Jacksonville name it closer to the opening date — but he expects it to be ready to host its first shows sometime in 2023. He said there is a "spring season" and a "fall season" in the concert industry. "If we can’t catch the spring, there’s no reason to rush, so it would be fall," he said.

It will be part of the larger Dennis + Ives mixed-use project, which will also include restaurants and office space. It's being built on the space previously occupied by a former Caribbean Cold Storage warehouse. Because floor-to-ceiling shelves were a structural part of the old building, it had to be razed and rebuilt. Marathon Live already operates similar concert venues in Nashville; Kansas City; St. Louis; Chattanooga, Tenn.; Birmingham, Ala.; and Little Rock, Ark., but all of those venues were built into existing structures. Marathon Live venues are only open on nights when a show is booked.

It's designed to hold 1,000 to 2,000 fans, filling a niche in the Jacksonville concert market between smaller venues such as Jack Rabbits or 1904 Music Hall and larger ones such as the Florida Theatre or Daily's Place. It will be roughly the same size as the Ponte Vedra Concert Hall, but Billue said it isn't his intention to steal shows from any venue.

"The idea is to complement, not take away," he said. "We want more shows in Jacksonville, not less."

He said renderings of the new venue should be released in the next month or two.

Florida Theatre adding VIP lounge, more

Work is already underway on a 3,000-square-foot VIP lounge and bar on the second floor of the historic downtown venue. It's part of an ongoing multimillion-dollar renovation announced prior to the pandemic that has already seen all of the theater's seats replaced and upgrades made to the sound and lighting system.

The new lounge — the first expansion of the theater's public space since it opened in 1927 — is being built in the office space part of the building. It is large enough, with room for about 325 people, to be used as an intimate venue on nights when the theater is dark. The price tag for the new lounge is about $3.25 million, with the cost split between the foundation that runs the theater and the city, which owns the building.

The next phase of the renovation project will force the theater to close for several months, likely July through October. During that phase, which will cost around $7 million, workers will renovate the restrooms, replace the building's heating and air conditioning, and repair and repaint the elaborate plaster ceiling in the main auditorium.

Ponte Vedra Concert Hall plans additional seats

The former Baptist church-turned-concert hall is getting a new balcony, but work probably won't begin until early 2024. The plan is to convert unused upstairs space into an area that will have permanent seats, giving the facility a lot more flexibility.

Presently, the concert hall has some events with seats on the floor and others where fans stand through the show. With the new balcony, Pellicer said, the hall could put on shows where fans can stand on the floor or sit in the balcony, or shows where everyone is seated.

"Right now, you have to choose between one or the other," he said.

As currently configured, the hall can handle about 480 seated fans or as many as 850 standing. "We’re really shooting to get over 700 seated," Pellicer said. "For standing, we’re wanting to get over a thousand total capacity."

That doesn't sound like much of a change, but it's huge in terms of the type of artists the venue could bring in. "That's a significant difference," he said.

The change would also allow the hall to offer more space between seats on the floor, which is something fans have requested.

The project is still in the design phase, so Pellicer said it's difficult to say exactly when it will start or how long it will take to complete. The venue is owned by St. Johns County, which makes it a government project and complicates things. But they are planning to book shows through the end of 2023 while the design work is finished and contractors are lined up.

A bonus of the project is that it should improve the acoustics in the concert hall.  "There’s always a fear when you add a balcony that you lose a lot of your high-end under the balcony," he said. "No one will be seated under the balcony. It will sound better than it currently does."

The venue's sound and light systems will also be updated as part of the project, he said.

St. Johns County also owns the St. Augustine Amphitheatre. No big changes are planned there in 2023, just maintenance such as painting and sandblasting that was put off during the pandemic.

This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Florida Theatre, Ponte Vedra Concert Hall planning big changes in 2023