Acrisure Arena opens in Coachella Valley amid gentrification

For three weeks in April, the Coachella Valley is the center of the world for live music. Its flagship event, Goldenvoice’s Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, as well as its country music cousin, Stagecoach, attracts hundreds of thousands of fans to see an expertly curated assortment of A-list and up-and-coming artists. , turning the area into a bacchanalian nightlife scene with hotels, Airbnbs and restaurants packed to the brim.

Can it stay that way for the other 49 weeks of the year? Irving Azoff and Tim Leiweke, the live-entertainment mega-moguls behind development company Oak View Group, are convinced.

Azoff and Leiweke ran nation live and AEG, respectively, the two largest concert promoters in America. Leiweke served as president of Major League Soccer and oversaw sports franchises including the Los Angeles Kings; Azoff, a member of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, has managed artists whose Eagles and Steely Dan, served as managing director of Ticketmaster and oversaw the renovation of The Forum in Inglewood (Azoff is getting small, too: he and his wife, Shelli, own local restaurants Nate’n Al’s and Apple Pan).

Acrisure Arena, their next major project, in partnership with Live Nation, which will open in Palm Desert on December 14, is a little more counterintuitive. It’s a glittering 11,000-seat arena near Palm Springs, a vacation town two hours from Los Angeles with a regional population of just under half a million. (Acrisure, which bought the naming rights, is an insurance company.) Azoff and Leiweke bet fans will come locally, on vacation, or from anywhere in a five-county area to see arena acts like ParamoreDave Chappelle and Grupo Firme all year round.

The arena is also a very visible sign of LA’s big entertainment money moving into the desert, as locals are already wary of the valley becoming unaffordable.

“It’s a booming market,” said Azoff, 74. “It’s the best winter in the United States, the population triples during the winter and people are looking for entertainment. To me, that’s a no-brainer given the success of Coachella and Stagecoach.

Oak View, the venue development and management company that Azoff and Leiweke co-founded in 2015, owns or partners with 36 arenas and nine stadiums in North America, including the Kia Forum in Inglewood, Madison Square Garden in New York, Bridgestone Arena in Nashville and the Chase Center in San Francisco. Even during the pandemic, Oak View Group has been on an arena-building spree, innovating new complexes in Las Vegas, Canada, Texas and Seattle over the past five years.

Azoff and Leiweke, both LA-area residents, each have vacation homes in the Coachella Valley. Weeks before the venue opened to fans, Azoff (who zoomed in from a private jet) and Leiweke (calling from a desk at Oak View Group headquarters) seemed giddy to open a venue in their backyard part time.

“About 450,000 people come during the winter and have just arrived now,” said Leiweke, 65. “They’ll drive down Highway 10 and be like, ‘What the hell is that?'”

Acrisure is a $500 million modernist setting of an arena, matching the area’s low-slung architecture with undulating jet-era overhangs. While Palm Springs has no shortage of gleaming hotels and lavish homes, Acrisure will immediately become one of the most visible features of the area’s skyline. The privately funded venue was originally slated to rise in downtown Palm Springs on tribal land owned by the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians, but moved to unincorporated, nonprofit land just north of Palm Desert after initial negotiations failed during the pandemic.

It will be the home of a new minor hockey franchise, the Coachella Valley Firebirds, but the two concert veterans seem the most excited to see performances there.

“It’s a really unique design: there’s no upper bowl, and the outdoor performer complex is amazing,” Leiweke said. “It will be the most intimate arena. I haven’t seen the Eagles as often as Irving, but that’s where I would like to see them.

The arena, booked by Azoff’s former company, Live Nation, has already selected big-name talent to open the snowbird season. Chappelle and Chris Rock will headline opening night Dec. 14; other upcoming shows include Hollywood Bowl-caliber acts like the Doobie BrothersMaroon 5 and the Eagles.

Leiweke sees it as a natural launching spot before heading to LA, Las Vegas or Phoenix. “If you’re an artist, we can give you the building to rehearse for a few days,” he said. “When you see Palm Springs on the tour itinerary, you don’t think of it as work; it’s a working holiday.

Outside of festival season, options for Coachella Valley goers have so far been limited to casino venues, a longer trip to Ontario and Pomona, or a two-hour drive from Los Angeles.

Coachella Mayor Steven Hernandez believes Acrisure will transform the culture in the area.

“I see this as a huge investment that will become contagious for the addition of new hotels and restaurants,” he said. “Comedy shows like Dave Chappelle and Chris Rock? It’s amazing, we’ve never seen this quality of acting here. We are no longer an afterthought.

For a predominantly Hispanic or Latino region, where many work in working-class hospitality, Acrisure will also become a showcase for Mexican and Latin music concerts. Bands like Los Tucanes de Tijuana and Banda MS performed on the main stage at Coachella. Now they will have a local arena to perform.

“It diversifies entertainment,” Riverside County Supervisor Manny Perez said. “Knowing the demographics of the Valley, Latinos are very willing to go to concerts. Banda MS, Café Tacuba, Marc Anthony, Pepe Aguilar: You better believe it’s going to be full for these shows.

Dave Brooks, Senior Director of Live Music and Touring for Billboard, said, “Acrisure Arena’s customer base obviously extends far beyond the Coachella Valley. The area’s biggest draw is already the live music: Coachella and Stagecoach.

This broad geographic reach is unique in the region, but “the team running Acrisure will need to get creative and put together competitive deals to book artists,” Brooks continued.

“SoCal is the ultimate live entertainment market, and because there is parity between Live Nation and AEG, artists can choose opportunities based on money and supply. Everyone competes for everything, but if you have a good product, like Harry Styles or Bad Bunny, you can win a surprisingly large amount of money.

This potential transport of vacationers and well-heeled snowbirds is part of what brought Oak View and Live Nation to the wilderness. But while the fierce struggle for beloved Pioneertown spot Pappy & Harriet’s has shown, the desert doesn’t always appreciate LA executives rushing in with their own big plans. A Busy 2019 Palm Springs City Council Meeting on Acrisure aroused controversial reactions Locals.

“We don’t want to overwhelm the community,” Leiweke said. “We want to add more. There are many stories of artists who made the desert what it is today.

According to Redfin, the median selling price of homes in Riverside County has nearly doubled since 2017, no doubt in part because of the area’s festival-driven glamor and relatively affordable price during the pandemic.

“Rural gentrification is real, but it’s been an ongoing struggle for five or 10 years,” Perez said. “You have a lot of money coming in, investing and buying land to own or develop. But we believe the arena will create 1,500 jobs for underserved communities. This will help provide broadband drinking water to people living in mobile homes. »

“There are pros and cons, I can’t deny that,” he continued. “But I think the pros outweigh the cons.”

“People are worried about a top-down approach,” Hernandez added, lamenting LA carpetbagger’s “‘we know what we’re doing, we don’t need your input’ attitude. But I told Irving and Tim that it was necessary to understand the demographics, to think about the identity of the Coachella Valley, we want to make sure that everyone in the desert can feel at home here.

For the big AEG and Goldenvoice events that have already made the region famous, is Acrisure a sign that even the Coachella Valley is not immune to competition?

“We will make the venue available to Paul Tollett,” Azoff said, referring to the Goldenvoice chief executive and Coachella co-founder. “We want to show respect to Paul there. But he can only book three headliners, and our phone is ringing with artists who want to play. My personal view is that we should counter-schedule the festival.

“Paul is a friend, and we will always want to work with him,” Leiweke said. “Coachella is the biggest festival in the world. Paul knows that at the end of the day, we are there to help him.

For Coachella Valley lifers, however, the end of the long trip down the 10 to see a show is reason enough to welcome a new arena to town.

“I have young daughters and we’ve always traveled to see Disney on Ice,” Hernandez said. “But now we can save on gas and hotels, stay local and take advantage of what other areas have.”