Veteran concertgoers may experience some deja vu, however, since Creek Music Theater (capacity 22,000), which was torn down 12 years ago after Sears, Roebuck and Co. moved its home offices from the Loop to the northwest suburbs.
"Things go full circle," said Steve Hyman, president of Sears about 300 acres sitting here for the last decade, and about two-thirds -- not for corporate office usage, but for more entertainment and specialty retail uses.
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It will have a joint operating agreement with the Sears Centre, and the venues will share parking facilities and join hotels.
United States, the Chicago area is also one of the most competitive: venues such as the UIC Pavilion or the Chicago and Auditorium theaters, as well as the larger Allstate Arena or the United Center. And in the summer months, Jam's new venue will compete with Live Nation, which One Pavilion at Northerly Island.
Can the market sustain the increased competition? Hyman is bullish. "We've studied the population growth, the increase in transportation time on the freeway, the demographics and social and economic analyses," he said.
"This is more than just voodoo economics: This is all about the fact that in 30 years, this is where Chicago is growing. It's 1.5 [million] to 2 million people who don't want to spend more than an hour to go to the existing venues.
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and ice shows, the Sears Centre will host several sports franchises: the Chicago Hounds hockey team, the Chicago Storm soccer team, the franchise. Some concert industry experts say the dates required by those games will minimize the number of concerts, but Hyman disagreed. "We're looking at about 150 event days in the building per year, and only 38 to 59 of those are sporting events.
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Dual-use arenas can be an acoustical nightmare, since audio echo at concerts.
"We're cutting a happy medium right down the middle," Hyman said, "where it's not too quiet of a house for a sporting event, but and it will sound like you're in a concert hall."
Chicago or the southern suburbs.
In fact, he believes the local market may be shifting to a model like the New York area, where the same artist might perform at New Jersey's Meadowlands, Manhattan's Madison Square Garden and Long Island's Nassau Coliseum.
or Allstate Arena and Sears Centre," Hyman said. "Maybe not the three of them, but two of them.
We are the third largest metropolitan area in the United States, and that happens all the time in New York and Los Angeles, so why not here?"
Nation and Jam. "Yeah, there would have to be a Magna Carta, and enemies into working partners.
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The promoters are skeptical. "I don't know if that can work, and until we try it, we won't know," said Jam Productions co-founder support two plays on most arena acts, and there are very few arena acts that are playing multiple nights."
But both said they welcome the new venue.
"I think competition is good for everybody," Gelman said.
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