A Music Venue Next To Fiserv Forum Makes No Sense

by Charlie in MKE

There is a lot of news coming out of Milwaukee this week. Most of it is bad and paints a bad light on the city. Some of it just makes no sense at all. After a failed Third Ward effort, Summerfest and FPC Live are looking at the vacant lot where the Bradley Center used to be to put an indoor music venue in the city. This is quite possibly the worst place to put a music venue in the city, and they should rethink this idea sooner rather than later to avoid an epic loss in revenue.

The original idea was to put this by the Summerfest grounds. The idea would be that Summerfest could have a year-round feel to it with indoor concerts when Summerfest couldn’t play shows. Ideally, you would think October to May. And my assumption would be there would be the occasional summer indoor show if needed. The Third Ward residents, being some of the posher and stick up their ass residents in Milwaukee, raised a major stink and told them to basically fuck off. But the idea to go to the Bradley Center is a bad one.

Fiserv Forum is already a concert venue. Putting a concert venue right next door is pretty ridiculous. It is basically making it seem like you have Varsity, the Fiserv, and JV, this new venue. Will musicians really go for that? At the end of the day, if the check clears, it might not matter. But also consider this, Turner Hall is right there too. Turner Hall is a small venue, but an iconic one at that. This new music venue could squeeze out Turner Hall which would be a disaster for the Milwaukee music scene.

If they were smart, they would buy The Rave. I’m sure The Rave needs more work than most houses that need to be flipped on HGTV, but still, that would be the way to go. There is already a base there that goes to shows. You can build around The Rave if you want to have food, bars, etc. It’s not the greatest area of town, but you have Marquette’s campus within earshot. That is an easy, concert-going audience to appease to.

This would be a colossal mistake if they go with the Bradley Center idea, but Milwaukee is all about them when it comes to these types of things.

Charlie.

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