The Seattle Mariners and Live Nation are teaming up for a major new concert venue across the street from T-Mobile Park.
The 5,500-capacity venue will be located in the Boxyard complex at the site of the old Pyramid Brewery, which the team redeveloped in 2021, on First Avenue South. Live Nation and First Avenue Entertainment, the limited partnership which owns the Mariners and holds a long-term lease on the property, announced the deal Thursday.
“Seattle has helped shape the sound of modern music, launching artists who have influenced culture worldwide,” Live Nation’s Pacific Northwest regional president Jeff Trisler said in a news release. “This new purpose-built venue is an investment in continuing that legacy. We are enhancing the city’s ability to attract even more major tours to the Pacific Northwest while supporting the next generation of performers as they grow.”
Slated to open in 2029, the new venue “will integrate” with the existing Victory Hall space, where Live Nation EDM subsidiary Insomniac Events has thrown a number of dance music shows. While the new venue is still a few years away, Insomniac is already ramping up its Victory Hall bookings with a new block party series this summer. The current Victory Hall space will eventually become the lobby and entry point for the newly constructed venue, which will be able to host both seated and general admission shows.
Besides Victory Hall, First Avenue Entertainment operates the Hatback Bar & Grill and Steelhead Alley at the Boxyard site.
While the name of the new venue has not been confirmed, the website SodoBallroom.com has details about the plans and figures touting the potential economic impact, including the creation of more than 700 jobs.
The venue is jointly designed by Live Nation’s in-house team and the Seattle-based LMN Architects, which designed Benaroya Hall among other local high-profile projects. The venue will be “tailored to the needs of modern touring productions,” according to the release.
Given its size, the venue will cater to artists who have outgrown theaters like the Paramount Theatre (roughly half the size), but aren’t quite ready to step up to arenas. Aside from comparably sized outdoor amphitheaters like Marymoor Park, Chateau Ste. Michelle and Remlinger Farms, it’s a sometimes awkward class of indoor venues that often finds artists playing acoustically challenged halls that weren’t necessarily designed for live music.
The Live Nation venue looks to be in direct competition with WAMU Theater, the Lumen Field-adjacent event space right around the corner. While WAMU Theater can accommodate larger crowds, depending on the configuration, its “pipe and drape” setup — using large curtains and backdrops to cordon off sections of the cavernous hall — is not preferred by some artists.
This is a developing story.
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