“The city of Denver is considering a plan to demolish Boettcher Concert Hall and build an outdoor amphitheater in its place at the Denver Performing Arts Complex. The 2,600-seat venue is Denver’s symphony hall, home to the Colorado Symphony Orchestra,” writes Ray Mark Rinaldi in Thursday’s (7/24) Denver Post. “The CSO is set to move out—temporarily—at the end of the 2014-15 concert season to accommodate a planned $17 million upgrade…. But, according to e-mails between the CSO and the Arts & Venues department, the plan may be changing. Demolition of Boettcher is the ‘leading idea’ now, A&V director Kent Rice wrote to CSO chair Jerry Kern in an e-mail exchange dated July 21…. The CSO immediately dismissed the suggestion…. The city has made no secret of its desire to put an outdoor amphitheater downtown as a way of expanding the diversity of audiences who use the arts complex…. The city has suggested the CSO move into the Ellie Caulkins Opera House a few doors down in the complex where it would share space with Opera Colorado and the Colorado Ballet. Because the three organizations perform on overlapping nights, especially in the month of December, that would make for crowded quarters.”
Posted July 28, 2014
