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Since 2022, when Portlanders became aware that entertainment industry monolith Live Nation wanted to open a mid-to-large size auditorium in the city's Central Eastside, the city's music scene has loudly rejected the idea. They've organized appeals, protests, hearings, and meetings, and voiced concerns about what the company's anti-competitive business practices could mean for local venues and musicians. Yet, in the fall of 2024, the City of Portland rejected an appeal of the project's conditional-use permit. The decision seemed settled; Live Nation was coming to town.
But then there was some movement. More on that in a moment.
The backstory: In 2017, the city's economic and development agency, Prosper Portland, purchased three lots of land from Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) with the intention of redeveloping it to encourage business growth in the Central Eastside.
Before the pandemic, the plan was to lease the lots to local developers Beam Development who wanted to raise office buildings on one or more of the lots with the help of another local company, Colas Construction.Â
However, during COVID-related shutdowns many businesses adapted to remote work, drastically reducing the market's desire for commercial and industrial office space. In 2022, Beam and Colas brought a new proposal to Prosper Portland—that of a music venue space to fill a hole in Portland's mid-to-large-size concert hall landscape.
Central Eastside Industrial Council, an influential business consortium from the area, threw their support behind the idea, and Prosper Portland decided the vision still accomplished the original proposal's goals of being something that would happen soon, work for zoning, and request no public funding. Beam would buy the middle lot, build a venue, and have the opportunity to develop/buy the other two lots as well.Â
Who would be running that venue? Live Nation: a global entertainment company that operates venues, produces concerts, sells tickets (they acquired Ticketmaster in 2010), promotes and sponsors music events, and even manages artists. Portland is the only major city in the US that doesn't have a Live Nation-operated venue, although they still produce shows here in arenas like Moda Center.
Even in 2022, Live Nation was a known bad actor in the music industry, but in the summer of 2024, the Department of Justice filed a historic antitrust lawsuit that 40 US states and district of Columbia have joined. The suit alleges the company engages in anti-competitive practices and monopolistic control of the industry, which pushes smaller businesses out of the market and results in higher ticket costs for consumers.
One such practice is the enforcement of non-compete radius clauses that keep the artists Live Nation manages from performing within a certain distance of the company's venues. For example, if an artist managed by Live Nation played Seattle, and they had a 200-mile radius clause in their contract, they wouldn't be able to play Portland, but they would be able to play Hayden Homes Amphitheater in Bend—which is a Live Nation venue.Â
Though no one denies that the lack of indoor mid-to-large size venues in the city plays an important role, radius clauses have been offered up as another possibility for why some national tours don't visit Portland.
In response to the news that Live Nation wanted to operate the proposed venue, various local businesses and advocacy groups mobilized campaigns, protests, and community discussions of how to prevent or limit Live Nation's presence in Portland.Â
MusicPortland, a local policy nonprofit that had previously lobbied for clearer/more concise noise complaint processes and which annually plans Portland Music Month, took up the charge, appealing aspects of the permitting process that applied public safety and the development's environmental concessions.Â
Beam and Colas have offered to add compromises in Live Nation's lease to make the venue available to the community a few times a year, and allow outside promoters the opportunity to book shows at the venue. But advocates have pointed out the concessions seem difficult for Beam to enforce.
In September 2024, attempts to appeal the project's conditional-use permit failed; the then-City Council sat for hours of testimony before sticking to their original decision that Portland's permitting office had no legal ground to rescind the permit.
Even as those giving testimony argued that allowing a company in the midst of a massive antitrust suit to open a venue in Portland would be the opposite of public benefit, the interpretation of "public benefit" simply didn't apply to the situation. The city's counsel clarified that the term related more to "proposed use, not user."
The board of Prosper Portland voted to sell the land to Beam and create a path for the company to propose buying the other two lots. The matter seemed closed.
In another piece for the Spring Arts Guide, music editor Nolan Parker profiled music-scene-focused councillor Jamie Dunphy, who is on the board of MusicPortland and who ran on a platform of protecting Portland's indie venues and musicians. Dunphy related that once he was elected, he asked Prosper Portland to show him that they followed the law about public land disposition. "They checked every box. They met the letter," Dunphy said. "There's no extra action for me to take there."
However, he also noted that while there are no actions for him to take as a city councillor, there are some movements surrounding another appeal, this time with Oregon Land Use Board of Appeals (LUBA) by Double Tee Concerts, and its founder David Leiken.Â
Leiken's lawyer declined to reveal the basis of their appeal because it would also contain their legal strategy. However, Dunphy characterized it as: "They're gonna start throwing things at it to see what sticks. The ideal situation there is that LUBA overturns the decision and sends it back to the current City Council for another analysis."
It appears that a very detail-oriented battle for the soul of Portland's music scene rages on.
Nolan Parker contributed to this reporting.
