Can Milwaukee support two new concert venues and 10 years since the Sikh temple shooting
With two new venues planned by 2024, Milwaukee could have as many as 235 more concerts a year. Can the market support that?
In spring 2024, a 3,500-person-capacity, ballroom-style concert venue is scheduled to open, pending approvals from city officials. Partially run by Milwaukee's Pabst Theater Group, it would be part of a proposed 11-acre development on the city's west side, Iron District MKE, including an 8,000-seat professional soccer stadium. Just a few months before that venue would make its debut, less than a mile away in the Deer District, another concert venue is expected to open its doors. Run by Madison-based FPC Live — concert behemoth Live Nation owns a controlling stake in FPC's parent company, Frank Productions — the $50 million concert complex is planned with an 800-person-capacity club and 4,000-person-capacity ballroom. The two new venues would be less than two miles away from the Rave, an independent operator that has been hosting concerts in its 3,500-person-capacity Eagles Ballroom and in three other rooms for 31 years. Together, the new venues are expected to host up to 235 concerts a year.
Shank Hall owner and independent concert promoter Peter Jest doesn't think it makes sense. "If there are four 3,500 to 4,500 general-admission buildings, five years from now, one of them will be doing horse shows," Jest said. "There won't be enough concerts. … It would be hard for me to believe that all these venues can survive." Pabst Theater Group CEO Gary Witt, naturally, begs to differ. "The beauty of Milwaukee is that there are 9.9 million people in the Chicago metro area," said Witt, who estimates that 30% of ticket buyers for Pabst Theater Group venues (including the High Life Theatre, Riverside, Pabst Theater, Turner Hall Ballroom and Back Room at Colectivo Coffee) come from Illinois. "Getting to Milwaukee is easier for 850,000 people in the north suburbs of Chicago."
"I think they can all co-exist, especially if they kind of find their audiences and find their paths forward and make the right business decisions," said Dave Brooks, senior director of live and touring for Billboard. "The more music you're bringing into a town, the more you are developing a music-buying market, and the more you are basically creating customers and people who go to concerts and increasing the number of shows people go to. "That can be really great for Milwaukee, where fans get more options at newer buildings and older, legacy buildings that people love."
Since the Sikh temple shooting in 2012, Wisconsin has seen at least 48 mass shootings that have killed 65 people and wounded another 187.
The Sikh temple shooting was not a turning point. It was a harbinger. Wisconsin had seen mass shootings before, but in the years since the violence has come quicker. Three killed in a spa in Brookfield. Three killed on a bridge in Menasha. Five killed at work in a brewery. Six killed inside a Milwaukee house.
More than half have occurred in the past two and a half years. Three in five occurred in the city of Milwaukee. Most did not generate weeks of media coverage. Some were barely covered at all.
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This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Can Milwaukee support two new concert venues
