Live Nation Canada president has high hopes for new ByWard Market club

Article content

The live-music venue coming to the ByWard Market area in 2025 will be a two-level concert hall with a capacity of 2,000 people, Erik Hoffman, the Ottawa-born president of Live Nation Canada, said during a hometown visit this week. 

He described the project as an “overdue space” for Ottawa and the continuation of a model launched in Toronto with History, the 2,500-capacity nightclub that’s the result of a partnership between Live Nation and music superstar Drake. 

Article content

Like History, the new club will designate the ground-floor space in front of the stage for a general-admission audience (i.e. standing or dancing), but also offer seating on the upper level. 

“It’s a model that a lot of music fans really love,” Hoffman said, pointing to its popularity in Europe and the United States. “It’s sort of a soft-seat theatre with the soul of a nightclub. We feel it will be hugely successful here.”

In Ottawa, the new club is a partnership between Live Nation and the National Capital Commission, but it will also be open to independent promoters who don’t work for Live Nation. 

“It will be a local venue open to local promoters,” Hoffman said, name dropping Bluesfest’s Mark Monahan and Spectrasonic’s Shawn Scallen as examples of Ottawa promoters whose shows would be welcome. 

Construction on the venue is scheduled to start this fall, Hoffman said, with an “ambitious” opening date targeted for late 2025. 

For the man who described himself as a music-industry “lifer,” the new venture marks a full-circle moment, he told an early-morning crowd gathered at Ottawa City Hall for Mayor Mark Sutcliffe’s monthly breakfast event. The journalist-elected-mayor dusted off his interview skills for a fireside-type chat with the music exec.

Article content

Article content

When the conversation turned to his start in the industry, Hoffman reminisced about his teenage years as the house sound person at the Pit, a long-gone Rideau Street basement club. 

“It’s full circle in that it was one city block from where we’re planning the new project,” Hoffman said. 

Hoffman was also a key partner in PRS Concerts, the independent Ottawa concert-promotion company of the early 2000s. He helped design and operate the former Capital Music Hall, a 1,000-capacity Rideau Street venue that lasted a couple of years in the mid-2000s before it was torn down to make way for condo towers.

Hoffman believes it’s the ideal time to launch a new music venture in Ottawa. The live-music industry is a rapidly growing part of the Canadian economy, and Live Nation is on track to rack up another record-setting year. 

“Why would we not invest here?” Hoffman said, noting that a spacious club was “quite clearly a segment that’s missing from the market in terms of venues.” 

He sees a vibrant downtown economy growing along with a new venue, as well as the development of a downtown arena for the Ottawa Senators. 

Article content

“It’s a very exciting time,” Hoffman said. “The fact that investment is on the doorstep says to operators like us (that) we’re in it together. I’m also hoping this is the beginning of a kickoff for folks to open new small clubs, too.

“Something’s going on here,” he added. “We see restaurants opening and creativity coming to life in other segments of the business. It is a big investment for us, but it feels like the stars aligned. It’s the perfect location.” 

The new venue will occupy the commercial space at Rideau Street and Confederation Boulevard that formerly housed a Chapters bookstore. Empty since 2022, it’s located next to the Rideau Centre and the ByWard Market and easily accessible by public transit. 

NCC specifications peg the size at 3,805 square metres of space above ground, with an additional 2,230 square metres of basement space. Live Nation Canada reached a deal to lease the space from the NCC last spring.

As for the city’s role in fostering the music business and nightlife economy, Hoffman said it was off to a good start because different facets of the industry already worked together.

Article content

“That’s very unique to Ottawa,” he observed. “There’s a feeling of moving ahead together.”

But he also cautioned the mayor to reduce the red tape and “irritating” bylaws. 

“Cities always ask what can we do and there’s funding and all of the things that are obvious answers, like putting money into the arts. But it’s also, ‘Get out of the way.’ Let’s not have a bunch of policy and irritating outdated bylaws get in the way. 

“If you really want to be a music city, if you’re actually serious about it, let’s not get hung up on the things that irritate creators, and that’s way too much policy and red tape to do anything. That was traditionally a problem here. I think it’s changing now.

“But that’s what you can do to help. Set the table for it to happen and then watch the creators do what they do.” 

lsaxberg@postmedia.com

Want to stay in the know about what’s happening in Ottawa? Sign up for the Ottawa Citizen’s arts and life newsletter — Ottawa, Out of Office — our weekly guide to eating, listening, reading, watching, playing, hanging, learning and living well in the capital.

Article content