Revolutionizing · Modernizing · Simplifying
Revolutionizing · Modernizing · Simplifying
1978. Denver builds a concert hall where the audience wraps all the way around the stage. Front, back, both sides. Nobody in the country had done it before. First symphony hall in the United States built in the round, and it opened right there in the Denver Performing Arts Complex.
Now here is the part people miss. In nearly half a century, Boettcher Concert Hall has never had a significant renovation. Not one. That stage, those seats, the lobby, the guts of the building. A lot of it still feels like 1978, and I mean that in the way where you can hear it and sit in it.
The Colorado Symphony is about to change that with a
We are talking health and safety upgrades first, which for a building this old is not glamorous but it matters. Then accessibility improvements. Updated seating. Reworked acoustics (in a room built in the round, acoustics are the whole ballgame). Improved lobby and event spaces. And a brand new education center, which is the piece I find most interesting because that is the long game for any orchestra.
Gretchen Hollrah, who runs Denver Arts & Venues, put it plainly to a City Council committee. Parts of the building still feel like 1978, and the place is "overdue for a wall-to-wall renovation." Julie DeWoody, the symphony's chief philanthropy officer, said the same thing in fewer words. It is overdue.
Here is where it gets real for anybody with season tickets. Construction is planned to start in summer 2028. Once the crews go in, the Colorado Symphony performs somewhere else for 15 months. Reopening is slated for fall 2029.
So for more than a year, one of Denver's anchor arts institutions is playing on the road, in a sense. Fifteen months is a long time to be out of your own house. Peter Oundjian is the music director, Daniel Wachter is the symphony's President and CEO, and that whole operation has to keep a full concert season alive without its main hall. That is a logistical mountain, if you ask me.
Let me break down the money, because this is the interesting part.
The big chunk of public money is
But that leaves a real gap. The Colorado Symphony has committed to raising at least
Not exactly, and this is a smart little maneuver that the City Council just signed off on.
The Boettcher Concert Hall name is protected in perpetuity. An earlier City Council resolution locked that in. So the name is not going anywhere.
Here is the move. Council approved a naming rights agreement that transfers the "Boettcher Concert Hall" name to the interior concert hall itself. The actual room where the music happens. That name stays prominently displayed inside the building forever. But moving it inside frees up everything else. The building's exterior facade. The performance stage. The seating. The lobby. The new education center. All of those can now be renamed by sponsors who write a check.
Katie Kramer, President and CEO of the Boettcher Foundation, is the one who brought the idea of moving the name inside. It threads the needle. The Boettcher legacy is untouched, and the symphony gets a stack of naming opportunities to sell.
So somewhere down the line you might walk up to a facade with a corporate name on it, buy a seat with somebody's name on the back, and then sit down inside Boettcher Concert Hall. All at once. That is the plan.
Look, the Denver Performing Arts Complex sits right in the middle of downtown, and downtown is the conversation right now. Foot traffic, office space, whether people come back into the core after dark. A revitalized, fully modern concert hall reopening in fall 2029 is exactly the kind of anchor that pulls people downtown for a Friday night. That ripples out to the restaurants, the parking, the condos and lofts within walking distance of the complex. When a cornerstone venue gets
And personally, Hayley and I have sat in that room. A hall in the round is a different experience. You are close, you are surrounded, the sound comes at you from a place it does not in a standard shoebox hall. Getting it modernized without gutting what made it special in 1978 is the whole challenge.
Summer 2028 the doors close. Fall 2029 they open again. Forty-eight years in, Denver's boldest concert hall finally gets its first real renovation. Worth your attention.