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Musician trade association MusicPortland has appealed to the City Council to stop promotions giant Live Nation from building a Southeast Portland concert venue.
The proposal is to turn an empty lot owned by Prosper Portland at the east end of the Hawthorne Bridge into a 3,500-capacity venue. As WW previously reported, a city hearings officer approved the venue’s development plan earlier this month. Beam Development and Colas Development Group, two Portland firms, intend to build the venue, and Live Nation would operate it.
“This is both the wrong place and the wrong operator for a venue this important to Portland,” MusicPortland policy chair and City Council candidate Jamie Dunphy said in a press release, referencing Live Nation’s monopolization of the country’s music scene and the logistical safety hazard the Southeast Water Avenue site poses.
The project’s developers are ready to fight. “We have already satisfied conditional use permit requirements as evidenced by city staff’s and the hearings officer’s approval,” says Jonathan Malsin, principal of Beam Development. “We look forward to presenting this project to City Council as well.”
MusicPortland’s appeal, which came after the group raised the $6,000 needed to file it, focuses on the changes in zoning codes that allowed the project to move forward. The Central Eastside zoning code does not inherently allow an entertainment venue like this, Dunphy contends.
The project was greenlighted Aug. 14 after the Portland Bureau of Development Services gave Beam and Ciolas a zoning code exemption for a smaller eco-roof.
“We believe that was incorrectly done, that the project is inherently unsafe, out of character, and that they should not be exempt from the base zone code requirements,” Dunphy says.
The appeal contends that because the venue was given a “conditional use permit,” not a conditional building permit, the company behind the project—Live Nation—and the goal of the project should matter in the City Council’s decision.
“We are asking the City Council to overturn the hearings officer’s decision and deny the permit completely,” Dunphy says.
Local musicians, represented by MusicPortland, have opposed the plan by Live Nation in part because the company has been accused of anti-competitive behavior by the U.S. Department of Justice.
As of Aug. 29, 39 states and the District of Columbia have joined a civil antitrust lawsuit filed by the DOJ against Live Nation and Ticketmaster for their monopolistic business practices.
Another objection raised by MusicPortland is the safety and logistics of the site. Dunphy explains that the majority of the parking spaces for concerts will be across the Central Eastside train tracks from the venue.
“Anyone who’s driven through the inner eastside knows those train tracks are an unpredictable nightmare,” he says. “Having people partying, drinking, having a good time and then crossing exposed train tracks—it’s dangerous.”
The appeal triggers a land use hearing that is scheduled for Sept 19.