Les Schwab Amphitheater eyes some big upgrades

By the time Bend’s riverside Les Schwab Amphitheater turns 20 in a couple of years, the Old Mill District concert venue is likely to undergo some major upgrades to not only improve its accessibility but open the door to bigger musical acts coming to town. (And just might even change its name.)

Venue General Manager Marney Smith said Thursday that amphitheater officials are scheduled to meet with city planners next Thursday to go over their “daydream wish list” of improvements they’d like to move forward with, if they can both meet the city’s requirements and determine how to cover the costs.

“It’s been 14 years since we made any critical upgrades to the venue,” Smith said. For example, she said, “The roof needs to be repaired or replaced.”

“We wanted to get all our wish list on paper, talk to the city planner and say, ‘This is what we want to do,'” based on city requirements such as staying out of the riparian area, Smith said.

She said the feedback will help them to decide, “Should we spend more money and time to make this more of a bidding document?”

Once they have the proposed changes nailed down and “get a price to it, then see if we can fund it. It’s a huge wish list,” Smith said. “It would need to pay for itself, get some new bands into the venue.”

Smith stressed that while the amphitheater and Old Mill District “don’t make a profit from the concerts, we surely make money. It covers a majority of expenses, but the majority (of the revenue) goes directly to the bands and the promoter,” Portland-based Monqui Presents.

But right now, Smith said, “There’s a lot of bands we can’t get in, that the stage clearance can’t accommodate.”

They aren’t talking about needing a taller roof, but to increase the clearance under it, to hang rigging and the like, and make it a stronger roof, to handle the weight of more equipment. A video screen also is an often-suggested addition.

Doing that, Smith said, “We could get a whole lot more bands to play the venue. It may not mean more bands per year, but new bands every year.”

Acts such as the Zac Brown Band or singer Bryan Adams, who bypassed Bend. Smith is confident they “would have sold out,” if the staging requirements could have been met, for light shows or what have you. More country artists are likely to find the venue to their liking, as well, with such improvements.

But she said promoters are insistent that they aren’t going to leave out key elements of artists’ shows. Instead, they’ll just go to a larger venue, likely in a bigger town, that can accommodate them.

“We’re trying to get bands that sell between 3,000 and 12,000 tickets per show. We want to ‘fill the ‘room’ — nobody goes to an empty bar,” she said. That’s not really competing with an indoor venue, like the Tower Theatre, where a group that usually sells 400 or so tickets fits just fine and fills the house.

“When we’re looking at all these things — how to make it ADA-compliant, why don’t you do water fountains, why couldn’t we add concessions? One thing leads to another,” Smith said. “It snowballs.”

“The biggest nut of this,” she said, is meeting the requirements of the Americans with Disability Act, which the amphitheater currently complies with only under a “safe harbor” provision. But the place is not really fully accessible.

“We have someone who can sprint (to get) you a burrito,” she said. But people with special needs can’t navigate the entire venue: “The dream is, everyone, regardless of ability, can go everywhere, front to back.”

That is also the biggest-ticket item on the wish list, Smith said, followed by more and better security fencing. “The third is the stage” — which, of course, is key to bringing in those bigger acts that Smith said “will be able to expense the other” costs of improvements.

One other possible fundraising avenue for the project would be to offer up naming rights to the venue. When it opened in 2001, it was named for the late tire magnate Les Schwab, Smith said, who was not only a friend but “more of a mentor” to her father, Old Mill developer Bill Smith.

“It was named in honor of the man,” not the tire company, Marney Smith said. “It was never promised in perpetuity. There was no money involved. It was just a handshake to a friend.”

Wouldn’t some object to a change to more corporate brand name, rather than one honoring tradition and the like? “I could stand on both sides of that fence,” Smith said.

But she stressed that at this point, before hearing what the city has to say, “The whole thing is just an idea.”

“If we can do this, it’ll be fall of next year,” Smith said. “Then we would move forward with one of the three promoters who responded to our RFQ (request for qualifications),” including Monqui Presents, with whom she said they’ve had a “tremendously great relationship,” but whose contract is up at the end of 2020.