Montgomery County wants 5k seat arena in downtown SS

I'm sure this will be procured in such a taxpayer friendly manner like the county procured Fillmore Silver Spring–screwing over a local business owner like Seth in favor of a global concert behemoth like Live Nation so LN can ignore the community support portion of its deal while booking such cutting edge music acts as Zeppelin cover bands, Bush and whatever two-bit rap acts nobody has heard of.

Oh heaven forbid you have to drive down to Constitution Hall a couple times a lifetime for high school graduations!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/md-politics/montgomery-eyes-5000-seat-sports-arena-for-downtown-silver-spring/2016/12/13/10445bf2-c177-11e6-8422-eac61c0ef74d_story.html?utm_term=.aa7beda6e087

Montgomery County wants to build a 5,000-seat sports and entertainment arena in downtown Silver Spring that would be the largest of its kind in the Maryland suburb.

The facility would be built either atop, or in place of, two county parking garages that straddle Bonifant Street east of the Silver Spring Metro station. The garages, which together have 1,772 spaces, are a prime parking spot for Red Line riders and people who work in downtown Silver Spring, a major job center.

The arena must be designed to serve as ?the home of one or more minor league sports teams, with a semi-professional hockey organization as the preferred anchor tenant,? the request says. It also must be able to host high school, amateur and college sporting events, serve as a live entertainment venue, and provide space for exhibits and conventions.

[A Silver Spring coffee shop, seen as part of the civic soul, reopens]

Tina Benjamin, manager of special projects for County Executive Isiah Leggett (D), said the facility would complement the Strathmore arts center and the Marriott Hotel and Conference Center, both which are in North Bethesda. She said it?s also needed to accommodate large public events, such as high school graduations, many of which are held at the 3,700-seat DAR Constitution Hall in downtown Washington.

?It would fill in what we see as a gap,? Benjamin said.

Yeah I saw Seth begging for change on the side of the road earlier.

I just can't see anyone building it…the Fillmore Silver Spring I think demonstrates that a Silver Spring venue  comes with a low catchment area… I'm sure if the Fillmore thought they could make it work they would have a lot of better acts but they just can't…they end up having a list of second class acts and tribute bands most nights playing to a more than half empty venue…combined with the ocassional act that is funnled to them via the head office as part of a package offer to the artist (ie., we pay you to play NYC, Miami or whatever where we know we'll do decent and also get you to play the Fillmore Silver Spring where we won't make much money but at least the venue is open.. this happened with Fito Paez recently..)

The idea that someone should build a 5,000 capacity venue to host a few graduation ceremonies a year is beyond laughable!

hutch wrote:
I just can't see anyone building it…the Fillmore Silver Spring I think demonstrates that a Silver Spring venue  comes with a low catchment area… I'm sure if the Fillmore thought they could make it work they would have a lot of better acts but they just can't…they end up having a list of second class acts and tribute bands most nights playing to a more than half empty venue…combined with the ocassional act that is funnled to them via the head office as part of a package offer to the artist (ie., we pay you to play NYC, Miami or whatever where we know we'll do decent and also get you to play the Fillmore Silver Spring where we won't make much money but at least the venue is open.. this happened with Fito Paez recently..)

The idea that someone should build a 5,000 capacity venue to host a few graduation ceremonies a year is beyond laughable!

They want a "semi-pro" hockey team as an anchor tenant, but from the few comments in the Post story at the time, the gripe was having to drive downtown to Constitution Hall for events like graduations.

hutch wrote:
I just can't see anyone building it…the Fillmore Silver Spring I think demonstrates that a Silver Spring venue  comes with a low catchment area… I'm sure if the Fillmore thought they could make it work they would have a lot of better acts but they just can't…they end up having a list of second class acts and tribute bands most nights playing to a more than half empty venue…combined with the ocassional act that is funnled to them via the head office as part of a package offer to the artist (ie., we pay you to play NYC, Miami or whatever where we know we'll do decent and also get you to play the Fillmore Silver Spring where we won't make much money but at least the venue is open.. this happened with Fito Paez recently..)

So which comes first in the chicken/egg debate? That SSF gets crappy bands because people won't come to Silver Spring or that people don't come to SSF because they get second rate bands? This is EXACTLY WHY the whole giving county money to Live Nation to open up FSS was such a bad idea.