 "Photo: Edmarc Hedrick/The Daily Texan")
Black and white tarps, taped together and covered in dust and dry paint, create the stage for hundreds of cardboard boxes. Wearing yellow safety jackets and leather work boots, a few workers take a lunch break on top, as thousands of empty seats, clothed in clear plastic, look on.
Soon, these 6,700 seats will look down on major musical acts that normally make Austin a stop on their tours, who instead will be playing at the new Cedar Park Center, just north of the “Live Music Capital of the World.”
Troy Dillinger, founder of Save Austin Music, said the new arena, which has already booked a George Strait show in September and a Wilco show in October, will likely provide major competition for other music venues in Austin and for the city itself.
“We have really failed as a business community to encourage this kind of new growth within the city proper,” Dillinger said. “I think that our recent failures with the city choosing not to create a music department, the community’s inability to come together as an industry — those things have conspired to kind of make it fair game.”
Earlier this summer, City Council postponed a vote on the creation of a music department, which would have been a coordinated effort between the city, local artists and venues to focus on the continuing importance of live music for Austin. At last week’s meeting, City Council removed the department from their list of agenda items.
According to a 2001 report commissioned by the city, which looked at the impact of live music on Austin’s economy, more than $616 million in economic activity and almost 11,200 jobs can be attributed to influence of music in the local economy.
Veronica Ruiz, Cedar Park Center spokeswoman, said the arena, which opens next month, will provide capacity for up to 8,700 concert attendees — larger than Stubb’s, which can hold about 2,500, but smaller than the Frank Erwin Center, which has a capacity of 17,000.
Dillinger said mid-sized venues like the new center are virtually absent in Austin, so a lot of shows have been taken outdoors to areas like Waterloo and Zilker parks, which has led to sound ordinance issues.
“If the city would incentivize anybody to build a mid-level venue here, you could do a lot of these shows, that infuriate the neighborhoods, indoors somewhere,” he said. “There are a lot of issues about music outside that would be solved if we had a mid-level concert venue — oh by the way, quality of life and culture and tourism — and blaming the budget for it is the latest pale excuse the city has.”
Ruiz said she knows a lot of acts bypass Austin.
“We do know they skip Austin a lot of times because there’s not a venue with a capacity of 8,700,” she said. “The center is only about a 20-minute drive now with the tollways, so we’re going to be able to track more concerts this way for people in Austin to enjoy.”
John Graham, Frank Erwin Center associate athletic director, said the Erwin Center is used to competing heavily for major acts.
“The competition we have is a little larger than just the Austin area,” Graham said. “If a band goes out and is only going to play 50 places, then we’re in competition with Miami as well as Dallas, Houston and San Antonio. There are only so many shows that any act would play, and we’re clearly going after any show out there, and we want all those acts to be able to come here if possible.”
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