Today VENUE GROUP, the forward-thinking global entertainment and hospitality group founded and led by Ben Lovett of Mumford & Sons and his partners, are sharing their 15-month timeline for the spring opening of Huntsville’s new Amphitheater.
Construction is now underway for the state-of-the-art Amphitheater in Huntsville and momentum is really picking up with doors of this iconic venue set to open April 2022.
The City of Huntsville, together with Venue Group, has been fine-tuning its vision for a major music venue for the past several years with the goal of delivering a magnificent, statement venue that will serve its community and bring top music talent to a region rich in cultural heritage.
The Amphitheater, which boasts a capacity of approximately 8,000 fans, is managed by “Huntsville Venue Group” (HVG); a joint venture partnership setup specifically to tackle such a significant project.
Huntsville Venue Group, led locally by the award-winning Ryan Murphy, includes leadership from the global Venue Group team including Ben Lovett, his brother Greg Lovett, Graham Brown & Jesse Mann, in partnership with other respected industry veterans Mike Luba, Don Sullivan, Jeff Kicklighter & Al Santos.
Lovett’s vision for Venue Group has long been to build a new era of world class music venues combined with significant community growth and amenities. He and the U.S. based team see Huntsville as the perfect location for their first foray into the U.S. market. During a time of such uncertainty for the live music circuit, this news of an impressive new venue will be a very positive beacon for both Huntsville and the nation.
Most importantly, Huntsville’s Amphitheater reinvents the concept of a major event space expanding it to a 365-day experience that will, in addition to hosting live music, provide daily community building opportunities for local groups, businesses and government organizations to hold both large-scale and small gatherings.
Adjacent to the Amphitheater, Venue Group is currently in talks with regional chefs and local vendors to bring to life their prized food village that will operate year-round and provide food and beverage options not only to patrons of the Amphitheater but also serve as an additional amenity and social space for Mid-City (the fast-growing neighborhood to the west of Downtown Huntsville).
Ben Lovett continues:
“One of the biggest trends in the past 10 years has been an elevation of the quality and variety of food offerings, especially around music. We believe there is a huge amount of opportunity in the hospitality side of entertainment to deliver food and drinks of such excellence that they stand on their own two feet as an offering not simply as a way to “tide you over,” quench the thirst or satiate the hunger temporarily. We have to aspire for higher standards than that. One of the reasons that Huntsville is so appealing to me and the team is it feels like going the extra mile is in the DNA of this city and we intend to go the extra mile when it comes to not just the concert experience but the restaurants and bars that lay adjacent and that will serve customers year-round.”
“More than an amphitheater, this facility will help us grow our music and culture economy,” said Tommy Battle, Mayor of Huntsville. “It will allow us to become a community of curators, where we can develop our own creative content that is unique to Huntsville that we can share globally. In addition to arts festivals, markets, and world-famous musicians, we’ll be able to incubate our own talent, showing that our next great entrepreneurs don’t all have to be in space and missile defense.”
