New concert venue coming to Jacksonville's Rail Yard District in 2023
Right now, it has no walls, no roof, no stage and no name, but a slab of concrete in Jacksonville's Rail Yard District is slated to become a new concert venue by early next year.
The venue, which will hold 1,000-2,000 fans, will be part of the Dennis + Ives mixed-use development just across I-95 from downtown Jacksonville. The complex, which is to include restaurants and retail businesses, is in a former Caribbean Cold Storage warehouse now under redevelopment.
The part of the complex that will be home to the new concert venue was filled with floor-to-ceiling shelving that held up the building's roof. It was simpler to tear that portion of the building down and start from scratch than to try to convert it, said Josh Billue, president of Marathon Live, the company that will operate the concert venue.
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The Jacksonville venue is planned to open sometime in the first quarter of 2023, Billue said. It hasn't been designed yet, and Billue said starting from scratch will be a new experience for his company. Marathon Live already operates similar concert venues in Nashville; Kansas City; Chattanooga, Tenn.; Birmingham, Ala.; and Little Rock, Ark., but all of those venues were built into existing structures. Building from the ground up will allow the company to think about things like sightlines and acoustics, he said.
The venue will be scaleable. That means it can be adjusted, depending on the size of the crowd. Billue said he's still not sure how that will work. It could feature a moveable stage or a design that allows the space to be reconfigured for larger or smaller crowds.
"We want to create a space that feels comfortable, regardless," said Billue, who added that he was on the University of Georgia football team, so he's familiar with the Jacksonville market.
The new venue will not have fixed seats, although some events will be seated and some will be standing-room general admission. Besides concerts, the space could be used for corporate events, trade shows, weddings and other gatherings.
Billue said he's had his eye on the Jacksonville market for several years, and the Dennis + Ives project was just what he was looking for.
The venue is sized to fit a hole in the Jacksonville concert market, he said. It's bigger than clubs such as Jack Rabbits or 1904 Music Hall but smaller than the Florida Theatre or Daily's Place. It would be comparable in size to the Ponte Vedra Concert Hall, which seats 450-900, but it's not intended to compete with any venues in the market.
"Our job is to help complement what is already here," Billue said. "It doesn't do any good to steal shows."
It will be open to all genres of music and comedy. Billue said it will not be a nightclub. it will have food and bar service, but will only be open if there's an event scheduled. Marathon Live's other venues typically do about 100 shows and events per year.
"We sell tickets and do shows," he said. "If we don't have shows, we're not open."
One big decision left to be made is what the venue will be named. Billue said he hasn't named any of Marathon Live's venues. Local residents came up with the name in each case. A contest will be announced later this year to pick a name for the new venue.
"The last thing I want to do is to come into somebody else's town and tell them what the name is," Billue said. "We could name it something, but it wouldn't have the same value as if someone from Jacksonville named it."
This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: New music venue planned for Jacksonville's Dennis + Ives project
