The former Ajax Metal Co. in Fishtown will reportedly be
converted into a $32 million entertainment and concert venue to be operated by
Live Nation.
The Philadelphia Inquirer said the project at the
shuttered factory across Delaware Avenue from the SugarHouse Casino at
Frankford Avenue will include two music venues under one roof — a two-level,
2,500-person-capacity concert hall called the Fillmore and the separate
450-patron Foundry club (plus bars and restaurant). The facility will be run by
the House of Blues Entertainment (HoBE) division of Live Nation.
The 141,000-square-feet facility will be called Penn
Treaty Village and will join other attempts to revitalize that portion of
Fishtown.
Live Nation is the region’s largest concert presenter —
contracting music acts for the Wells Fargo Center, Susquehanna Bank Center,
Festival Pier, Tower Theater, and Theater of Living Arts.
Here’s more from the Inquirer, which questions whether
rival concert promoters will be displeased by the additional competition.
Can you hear the teeth-grinding of rival promoters at the
smaller Ardmore Music Hall, World Cafe Live, and Underground Arts; the
medium-size Trocadero, Union Transfer, and Keswick Theatre; and the Fillmore’s
most obvious rival, the 2,500- to 3,000-person-capacity Electric Factory,
steered by former Live Nation exec Larry Magid?
“It’s crazy,” said rival concert booker Jesse Lundy of
Point Entertainment. “This town is out of control, over-clubbed. It’s become a
seller’s market. We’re fighting, competing over everything, even acts worth $5.
Talent agents are looking at us and licking their lips like we’re a big lamb
chop.”
Source: Philadelphia
Business Journal
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