Potawatomi Casino in Milwaukee closes Northern Lights Theater, will become new sportsbook venue

The lights have gone out for Milwaukee's Northern Lights Theater.

Potawatomi Hotel & Casino's 22-year-old concert and comedy venue has shut down, following a final Northern Lights performance with Herman's Hermits starring Peter Noone Friday.

In a city with no shortage of music venues, Northern Lights was the only theater of its kind, seating just 600. Some acts only played the theater when they came to town, and Northern Lights also booked shows with legends and veteran performers who typically would play far larger venues in town.

In its place, Potawatomi will offer another exclusive venue in Milwaukee — a sportsbook allowing guests to gamble on sporting events, following approval from Gov. Tony Evers last February.

"It is going to exceed what you experience at a normal sportsbook," property Chief Executive Officer and General Manager Dominic Ortiz told the Journal Sentinel. "We are able to provide that next-level experience."

Ortiz said it's too soon to name the construction price tag, but the theater space will undergo an extensive conversion to become "the premiere regional sportsbook experience," centered around a 120-foot video screen that can broadcast multiple games at once — or occasionally one high-interest game — and offering patrons food and a full-service bar.

"If you can't see the Bucks or Brewers at the stadium or Fiserv Forum, this is going to be the place to be," Ortiz said. "It's exciting to engage in the sports enthusiasm in this town and offer new gaming revenue and more tax revenue for the city."

When Potawatomi's new sportsbook will open

The permanent sportsbook is scheduled to open by December or the first quarter of 2024. The Fire Pit Sports Bar and Grill near the theater has also closed; ultimately, it will be converted into a new poker room that will open in the same time frame as the sportsbook.

Combined, the theater and grill employed 58 people, Potawatomi spokesman Ryan Amundson said. All 41 restaurant employees are being reassigned, and all 17 theater employees have been offered other employment opportunities at Potawatomi.

While construction is underway for the permanent sportsbook, two temporary sportsbook sites will operate at Potawatomi. They're scheduled to open within the next three to six weeks, Ortiz said.

Located at the Fire Pit site in the northwest corner of the casino on the first floor, and on a skywalk on the property's second level, the temporary sportsbook sites will have a combined 17 kiosks that will be available 24 hours a day. Sportsbook users will have access to designated 20-minute parking spaces, and both locations will provide odds boards. The sportsbook site at the old Fire Pit will offer a full-service bar, eight high-definition TVs and an LED screen featuring each day's biggest games.

Fourth sports betting site to open at a Wisconsin casino

Potawatomi received Evers' approval to operate a sportsbook in February, following a 28% drop in gambling revenue in the year-period ending June 2021 compared with the same, pre-COVID period that ended in 2019.

Potawatomi will be the fourth casino to offer a sportsbook in Wisconsin, after Evers signed similar compacts with other tribes. The Oneida Nation and the St. Croix Chippewa Indians have opened sportsbooks at casinos in Green Bay and Turtle Lake, respectively. Mole Lake Casino & Lodge in northeastern Wisconsin, owned and operated by the Sokaogon Chippewa Community, will open its sportsbook in March.

"Sports betting is one of the hottest new gaming areas for casinos in the United States," said Ortiz, who helped secure sports betting for his previous employer, the Saginaw Chippewa tribe's Soaring Eagle Casino and Resort in Michigan, and has made sports betting a primary goal since joining Potawatomi 20 months ago.

"Sportsbooks are low-margin businesses for casinos, but as an amenity, it will engage customers … bring in incremental guests to our facility and continue to build up our database."

Revenue bounces back, still lagging national trends

After the sports gambling compact was made with Evers, the Potawatomi tribe has seen gambling revenue rise to near pre-COVID levels at the Milwaukee casino, earning at least $388 million, and likely more than $400 million, for the year-period ending last June, a 33% increase from the year-prior period.

But that increase still lagged the national trend. The National Indian Gaming Commission reported a 40% increase for tribe casinos across the United States.

And Potawatomi is facing increasing competition. The Ho-Chunk Nation has received state and federal approval to build a casino complex in Beloit that it aims to open within the few years, and the Menominee tribe is working with Hard Rock International to try and open a casino in Kenosha County, after a bid failed in 2015, following pushback from the Potawatomi tribe.

Meanwhile, in Illinois, casinos have opened or are being proposed in Waukegan, Rockford and Chicago.

"The Illinois expansion is unprecedented at least in the Midwest," Jeff Crawford, the Potawatomi tribe's attorney general, told the Journal Sentinel last year. "It will probably start saturating the market at some point."

Rock & Brews to open at Potawatomi this summer

To stay competitive, Potawatomi is in the midst of a $100 million renovation to its third floor, opening in phases this summer and fall, that will include more than 1,800 additional slot machines, a high-limit gambling room and a Rock & Brews restaurant, part of a chain co-founded by KISS rockers Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons.

Rock & Brews, tentatively scheduled to open in August, also will feature a stage and become the casino's primary site for live entertainment, Ortiz said. Live entertainment in other parts of the casino will be phased out by the end of February due to spacing for construction needs, he said, although live entertainment will continue to be offered for VIP events and large monthly parties.

Potawatomi Business Development Corp.'s Greenfire Management Services of Milwaukee is teaming up with Gilbane Building Services as the general contractors on the project, and also will oversee construction of the sportsbook, Ortiz said.

Announced last year, the third-floor renovation initially was to include a Starbucks, but Potawatomi will now create and operate a coffee shop behind its own brand, Ortiz said. The casino also reopened its high-end Dream Dance Steakhouse restaurant last week with a new menu and chef.

In terms of constructing the new sportsbook, the Northern Lights Theater was a necessary casualty, Ortiz said, the most natural place for the conversion.

"We're limited to operate gaming on trust land, and the theater sits on trust land," Ortiz said. "It's a prime location."

Ortiz wouldn't disclose whether the theater had operated at a loss or profit, but said, "the theater was limited in capacity to bring the level of entertainment we wanted to our guests. … We can't reach the audience we need to."

Northern Lights Theater has lost its glow in recent years

Debuting in November 2000 as part of a $120 million expansion, the Northern Lights' annual calendar lost some luster in recent years, and its Bonkers comedy bookings faced fresh competition from newer venues like the Milwaukee Improv and The Laughing Tap.

But the theater certainly hosted its share of big names, giving Milwaukee music and comedy fans rare opportunities to see favorite acts in a strikingly intimate setting, with front rows just a few feet from the stage, and superb sightlines and acoustics at the top of the second level.

Hall & Oates was the first act to headline the 600-seat theater on Nov. 2, 2000 — their most recent show in Milwaukee, in 2021, was in front of several thousand people at the American Family Insurance Amphitheater — and the venue hosted numerous acts that were accustomed to larger audiences, including James Brown, Willie Nelson, Aretha Franklin, Ringo Starr, Smokey Robinson, Tony Bennett, Jay Leno, George Carlin, Bob Newhart, Martin Short, Bonnie Raitt, B.B. King, Erykah Badu and Blondie.

The theater hosted rare Milwaukee stops for such performers as Kevin Costner, Dana Carvey and Ray Romano with Brad Garrett, while acts like Cheap Trick, Rick Springfield, Roger Hodgson of Supertramp and the Brian Setzer Orchestra held multi-night residencies. And it was the spot where some late legends — including Loretta Lynn, Levon Helm, Chuck Berry, Don Rickles and Milwaukee native Al Jarreau — performed their last shows in town.

"Everything was top-notch," said veteran local concert promoter and Shank Hall owner Peter Jest, who lost out on some bidding wars against the Northern Lights Theater. "It's a very beautiful theater, and people saw a lot of great shows there."

But Jest suspects the economics of running a theater that small weren't feasible for Potawatomi. Inevitably, the theater was dark dozens of nights each year, while the sportsbook will operate every day.

"The casino is always crowded," Jest said. "They don't need a theater to draw people there."

Jest suspects some Northern Lights perennials that exclusively book casino gigs may now skip over Milwaukee, while others will opt for festivals like Summerfest.

Other new Milwaukee concert venues are in the works

The theater’s closure follows news earlier this month that long-running East Side music venue the Jazz Estate will be scaling back live music and put greater emphasis on a new cocktail menu.

But a couple of new Milwaukee music venues appear to be on the horizon.

Madison-based FPC Live, backed by concert industry giant Live Nation, expects to open a $50 million two-venue concert complex in the Deer District next year. FPC Live is in "the final stages of preparing for the start of construction," CEO Joel Plant told the Journal Sentinel. The venue will feature a 4,000-person-capacity room and an 800-person-capacity room, both of them ballroom-style with some seats on the upper levels.

And Milwaukee’s Pabst Theater Group is partnering with the concert industry’s second-largest player, AEG, on a 3,500-person-capacity ballroom-style venue that would be part of the proposed Iron District MKE. Centered around an 8,000-person-capacity soccer stadium that would be the home of a new USL Championship team and Marquette soccer and lacrosse teams, the development is looking at a 2025 opening.

Nevertheless, those new venues won't offer the seated intimacy of the Northern Lights. Ortiz recognizes there may be criticism over Potawatomi's decision to close the theater.

"We certainly love the history of the Northern Lights," Ortiz said. Without offering specifics, he added that Potawatomi will use the brand name in the future.

"Although people may be sad to see Northern Lights go … I think they will quickly realize what the new Potawatomi can bring to the market. And we're not going to stop."

Editor's Note: This story has been updated with the correct date for the Northern Lights Theater's first concert, with Hall & Oates.

The Journal Sentinel's Cary Spivak contributed to this report.

Contact Piet at (414) 223-5162 or plevy@journalsentinel.com. Follow him on Twitter at @pietlevy or Facebook at facebook.com/PietLevyMJS.

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This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Potawatomi Casino closes Northern Lights Theater; sportsbook planned