THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, August 14, 1994 TAG: 9408110074
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY ESTHER DISKIN, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 231 lines
ENTER A WORLD of perpetual summer party: Duck under striped blue awnings for hot dogs, fried chicken and foamy cold beer, sit at a picnic table to chat or listen to a pre-concert guitar duo.
Later at night, find yourself barefoot in the soft grass, dancing in the dark to the drumbeat pounding up through the hill and into the heart. When the sound stops, stare up into the sky and let out a whoop, shouting for more music - more! Make it never stop.
Welcome to the Hardee's Walnut Creek Amphitheater in Raleigh. ``We're not just in the business of concerts,'' says Wilson Rogers, the guy who runs the place. ``It's an experience.''
It's an experience that Virginia Beach leaders want to bring to local residents by next summer. More likely, music won't be booming up to the sky until 1996.
City leaders say an amphitheater, modeled on the one built three years ago in Raleigh, is a key piece of their vision to transform Virginia Beach from summer resort into national star. Other pieces of the grand scheme include a hoped-for racetrack, a major soccer complex, new golf courses and an expanded Virginia Marine Science Museum.
An amphitheater - headlining Big Names like Jimmy Buffett, Lyle Lovett and Alabama - should draw people from miles around.
``Virginia Beach may be searching for an identity,'' said Councilman Linwood O. Branch III. ``We're the 37th largest city in the country, but we don't have a professional sports team, we don't have a huge national attraction. We've evolved into a suburban type of bedroom community.
``An amphitheater would bring us together, instill a sense of community and family pride.''
If it gets built, the 20,000-seat amphitheater will dwarf the other concert venues in Hampton Roads. Norfolk's Scope, which hosted five concerts in 1991 and 1992, has concert seating capacity of 13,500. The Hampton Coliseum seats 13,800, and has an average of eight concerts a year.
An amphitheater with a season that stretches from spring to early fall won't compete with those halls for artists, say city and music officials.
That's mainly because stars can afford to be choosy, and in the summer they don't choose to play indoors. They'd rather be under the sky, with electric guitars and huge crowds screaming into the night. Huge crowds mean more money.
So the big stars skip Hampton Roads for Raleigh. Janet Jackson, Billy Ray Cyrus, Reba McEntire and the Eagles (on a $97-a-ticket reunion tour) are playing the Hardee's Walnut Creek Amphitheater this summer.
Virginia Beach officials say an amphitheater will give those artists a reason to stop in Hampton Roads. And it will offer a place for some star-studded events, instead of the Oceana Naval Air Station tarmac, where the city held its concert for troops returning from Operation Desert Storm.
City leaders are moving quickly to get an amphitheater.
The city is negotiating for a 112-acre site, known as Princess Anne Commons, next to the Virginia Beach Municipal Center. City officials won't discuss the amount of the offer. The council recently allocated $500,000 to cover a bid deposit and study of wetlands and other environmental issues.
If that plan falls through, the city has some back-up sites of at least 80 acres, including Princess Anne Park and a tract in the Lake Ridge area.
The estimated cost of an amphitheater is $12 million, which doesn't include widening roads to handle thousands of cars.
The city has an agreement with Cellar Door, the largest concert promotion company in the country, to pursue a venture to build an amphitheater. The split of taxpayer and private money hasn't been decided, but it's likely that the city would pay about $7 million and Cellar Door would chip in $5 million, according to Mark Wawner, the city's project manager for the Economic Development Department. Once it's built, Cellar Door would manage it and book all the performers.
There are no blueprints, or even colored sketches, of what the amphitheater might look like. But city officials don't really need drawings. They already have something in mind.
``If we could pick up the Raleigh facility and put it right in, we would,'' said Bill Reid, president of Cellar Door of Virginia.
Twice this year, two groups of Virginia Beach officials checked out the Raleigh theater and took in concerts by Bette Midler and Phil Collins. They came back excited.
Councilman Branch circles back to that word, ``exciting,'' four times, to describe what he found. ``It was the most intimate, relaxing, warm-feeling sort of event that I've been to in a long time,'' he said. ``It was wonderful. It was a love-fest. It was a social gathering, it was an event.''
He liked it all, from the sloping lawn - ``a tight, big salad-bowl'' - to the family-style mood, with picnic tables near the concession stands. Virginia Beach Mayor Meyera Oberndorf says she was surprised by the natural beauty of the outdoor theater, surrounded by tall trees and man-made ponds.
They sensed a spirit that keeps people like 41-year-old Dewey Ferguson buying tickets for six or more concerts a year. Ferguson comes with his girlfriend. He comes alone. He just can't stay away. ``The first time we came, it really popped our eyes, the concessions, the flowers, the trees,'' he said. ``It's nice, kind of festive.''
That magical excitement, which drew 450,000 in the 1993 season, is in the hands of general manager Wilson Rogers.
Making that excitement work takes seven full-time staff and 450 part-timers, from stage hands to pizza vendors. Rogers wants to make sure everyone is working to give the crowd something special. He wants to deliver ``an experience'' - at least 45 times each season.
The 20,000-seat amphitheater is his pride and joy, partly because he came at the beginning, when there was nothing but flat land. ``Don't you think I have a right to be proud?'' he said.
The amphitheater was a big gamble for the city, accomplished despite one failed deal and organized opposition from residents near it. Raleigh's financing is of particular interest to Virginia Beach officials, because the two markets are similar. Cities with a smaller market, like Virginia Beach, usually have put up public money to lure a private company.
Raleigh sank more than $11 million. Its private-sector partner, PACE Entertainment Group in cooperation with Sony Corp., invested $3.5 million. Hardee's Food Systems Inc., the Rocky Mount fast-food chain, paid an undisclosed amount to become the amphitheater's chief sponsor, and to attach its name to the theater and sell its food at the concessions.
Raleigh spent an additional $3.5 million to build a four-field softball complex in the area, which provides overflow parking spaces for the amphitheater. Those fields - with bleachers, a brick concession stand and maple-lined walkways - get used almost every summer night.
The fields were expected to be a hit. But the swift popularity of the amphitheater has taken even its main cheerleader, City Manager Dempsey E. Benton, by surprise. The annual attendance increased by 168,000 over the first three seasons.
``This embracing of it is occurring at a faster pace than I expected,'' he said. ``We hoped, but frankly I didn't expect it.''
Still, he expects the amphitheater will break even for the first time this year. In addition to taxes, the city gets a percentage of the gross receipts, a combination that brought $1.3 million to city coffers last year.
Indirect economic impact is much harder to put a finger on. The city's convention bureau estimates that the amphitheater played a role in pumping $23 million into the local economy last year, counting overnight visits by concert-goers and their spending on food and gifts.
Virginia Beach estimates it will make $800,000 to $1 million in taxes, if it can attract about 400,000 people a season. The indirect benefits, based on a consultants' study, are estimated to be at least $8 million.
The secret of success for an amphitheater is to keep the audience coming back, again and again.
To Rogers, what keeps them coming back is comfort.
Comfort means people shouldn't have to sit in a traffic jam, then walk a mile to get from their cars to the concert. There are three routes into the Walnut Creek Amphitheater.
Under the amphitheater's roof are chairs for 7,000 people, with a special row of tables for corporate sponsors. The green sloping lawn has room for at least 13,000.
The sound is serious business, tinged with mystery. Rogers doesn't like to explain in too much detail the technological wizardry that can make the music - which obviously comes from giant, square speakers in the theater and on poles across the lawn - seem to echo out of the sky, the lawn, the trees.
But he will brag about it: ``What you hear is CD-quality sound. At my home, we take music very seriously. A lot of people do. At a time when you have DATS, CDs and surround sound, the old days of being tolerant of feedback, bounce, reverberation - these days are over in most people's minds. They don't want to listen to quality less than they get in their homes.''
Rogers says the sound system, developed specifically for live concerts, is far superior to acoustics in indoor facilities, which are designed to handle events from sports games to music events.
Sometimes, that CD-quality sound draws complaints from people who live near the amphitheater. Much of it depends on the weather - low cloud cover makes the sound travel a greater distance - but the number of complaints has dropped quite a bit, according to the city manager.
It may be hard to complain too loudly about an amphitheater that often hands out free tickets, and raised $30,000 this year for a non-profit hospital in the city. School boosters sometimes volunteer at the concession stands, getting a percentage of the earnings for projects.
But what seems to win the audience's love and affection at Walnut Creek is something simple: the great outdoors. The amphitheater seems plunked down in untouched, natural wilderness. That's partly an illusion. Some $750,000 was plowed into landscaping - trees, flowers, lush green grass - at Walnut Creek, Rogers said.
An hour before a concert begins, people start spreading out blankets on the grass. Once they stake out a spot, they head for the food stands (no picnic lunches are allowed), then plop down on the grass for leisurely chatting. Kids roll like logs down the slope, then chase each other through the maze of blankets.
The lawn is also an ideal vantage point for people-watching. ``It's like a zoo, seeing all the people out here,'' says 32-year-old Gina Cullins, with a cushion tucked under her arm. ``That's the best part.''
Another fan is Judy Garland, a 46-year-old who has a gold circle seat, under the roof in the front rows, for the entire season. The gold circle season pass costs $1,500. Garland sits in that seat only when it rains. All other times, she'd rather be out on the lawn.
``Acoustically, the lawn is what is cool,'' Garland says. ``I have good seats, but I always go out to the lawn. It's great grass. There's more air. You can spread out. You can dance. Last year, at Santana, I couldn't sit in a seat. I had to boogie.''
Out on the grass, the stage looks like a blaze of fluorescent light with pins bobbing across it. But binoculars aren't required. Five giant video screens mounted in the amphitheater's roof zoom in on the performers, close enough to watch their fingers dance on the guitar strings.
``The person who bought the last row is as important as the person who bought the front row,'' said Rogers. ``They ought to see the emotion on the face of the artist as well as hear emotion in the voice.''
Out on the grass, people don't behave anything like the crowd in the aqua-colored seats, who applaud and give standing ovations like a normal concert audience.
People on the blankets are in their own little worlds, with the music washing over them. Some lie back and stare into the stars. Many dance, alone or with a partner, shadows moving with the barefoot freedom that darkness brings them.
When raindrops start falling, no one runs for cover. They sit in the rain, or pull the blankets over their heads, while the music beats out of the hill. The sound of clapping vanishes into the night sky, so people on the lawn shout, whistle and scream at the end of every song.
Out on the grass, when the band leaves the stage, people on the lawn go wild. They raise lighters, matches and flashlights over their heads in a screaming tribute. Come back. Come back. Just one more song. ILLUSTRATION: IAN MARTIN/Staff color photos
Steve Winwood performs at Hardee's Walnut Creek Amphitheater in
Raleigh, N.C. - which would be the model for a Virginia Beach
facility.
Raleigh's amphitheater offers chairs for 7,000 people, and a sloping
lawn with room for 13,000 more. A facility that size in Virginia
Beach would dwarf present concert venues in Hampton Roads.
Map
STAFF
THE PROPOSED SITE
Graphic
AT WALNUT CREEK
A sampling of this season's line-up at the Hardee's Walnut Creek
Amphitheater in Raleigh and the cost to hear the music.
Jimmy Buffett: Lawn, $16.75; seats, $22.75, $29.75; sold out.
Michael Bolton: Lawn, $19.75; seats, $24.75, $34.75.
Brooks & Dunn: Lawn, $14.75; seats, $19.75, $24.75.
Bette Midler: Lawn, $25; seats, $45, $75.
Reba McEntire: Lawn, $18.75; seats, $23.75, $33.75; sold out.
Eagles: Lawn, $37.50; seats, $97.
by CNB