An $83 Million Performance Venue for Williamsburg? I Love Live Music. But I Still Have Questions.
An opinion piece by John Womeldorf | Mr. Williamsburg
If you know me, you already know I love live music. I go to concerts, I support local musicians, and I have hosted house concerts for years. Lisa and I have opened our home to artists and music lovers through Music at the Glebe, and I will happily get in the car and drive an hour—or two—to see somebody I really want to see.
So you would think I would be the first guy standing up and cheering for a major new performance venue here in Williamsburg.
Maybe eventually I will be.
But when the number attached to the proposal is $83,087,174, I start asking questions. A lot of questions.
Over the last several days, I have spent considerable time researching this proposal, looking at comparable performance venues throughout Richmond and Hampton Roads and, most importantly, going through the actual presentation materials for the proposed Greater Williamsburg Live Performance Venue.
After looking at the plans and reading through the attendance, operating and economic-impact projections, I find myself in an interesting place.
I’m still on the fence.
In fact, I may have more questions now than I did before.
That’s not because I think the presentation was bad. Quite the opposite. There are parts of this proposal that make considerably more sense to me after reviewing the actual information. There has clearly been an enormous amount of thought, planning and professional work put into the concept.
There are also some assumptions that I think deserve a much deeper conversation before Greater Williamsburg commits to an $83 million project.
I’ve spent more than two decades in real estate and quite a few years before that around construction and renovation. When somebody hands me a project cost down to the dollar, I tend to keep reading the rest of the spreadsheet.
So I did.
This Is Much More Than a Concert Hall
The first thing that became obvious to me is that calling this a “performance venue” probably undersells what is actually being proposed.
This is a serious, purpose-built indoor and outdoor entertainment complex planned adjacent to the Greater Williamsburg Sports & Events Center and the Colonial Williamsburg Visitor Center.
The proposed indoor performance center is approximately 68,000 square feet and is designed to accommodate roughly 1,000 seated guests or 1,700 people in a general-admission configuration. The plans show about 500 fixed seats and another 500 retractable seats, with fixed seating on both the first and second levels.
The stage itself is approximately 34 by 39 feet, with a stagehouse, orchestra pit, equipment systems and catwalks. Behind the scenes, the plans include six dressing rooms, a large chorus and flex room, artist hospitality areas, laundry facilities, a dedicated artist entrance, production offices, crew rooms, a VIP and donor lounge, VIP boxes, a full-service kitchen, concession areas, a box office and first-aid facilities.
The acoustic design calls for shell panels, curtains and acoustic clouds, along with an independent performance hall sound system. The loading and scene-dock area is designed to provide secured access for as many as five trucks or buses.
Let me put that in plain English.
They aren’t simply building the Williamsburg Players a nicer theater.
This facility is being designed to handle professional touring productions, commercial events and serious performing arts organizations. We’re talking about real trucks, real buses, real production crews and real backstage operations.
The design tells me they are expecting professional touring artists to come here.
Naturally, that leads me to ask: Who are they?
Because the building certainly appears to be ready for them.
The Outdoor Amphitheater May Be the Most Interesting Part of the Entire Proposal
The outdoor portion of the project is approximately 90,000 square feet and is designed to accommodate about 1,100 seated guests and another 3,900 people on the lawn, for a total capacity of roughly 5,000.
The plans show an approximately 8% rake to the lawn, a stagehouse measuring roughly 53 by 82 feet and pedestrian cross paths designed for crowd flow and safety.
Again, this isn’t somebody putting a portable stage on a patch of grass.
This is a legitimate commercial amphitheater.
And I will admit that the more I look at the proposal, the more I think the outdoor venue may be the strongest part of the entire concept.
A 5,000-person amphitheater could potentially fill an interesting niche in our region. It is smaller than Richmond’s large outdoor amphitheater but large enough to attract legitimate touring acts. Williamsburg already has thousands of hotel rooms, restaurants, Colonial Williamsburg, Busch Gardens and an established tourism market.
People already like coming here.
I can absolutely picture Lisa and me meeting friends for dinner, heading to an outdoor concert and being home shortly after the encore. Frankly, sign me up.
I can also see the tourism argument. Come to Williamsburg for a Friday-night concert, spend Saturday in Colonial Williamsburg, have dinner downtown and go to Busch Gardens on Sunday. That weekend package makes sense to me.
The question is whether enough people will do it often enough to support the projections being presented.
And that’s where I really started digging into the numbers.
This Idea Didn’t Suddenly Appear Last Week
I also want to be fair about the history of this effort.
When I first heard renewed discussion about an $83 million performance venue immediately after the opening of the new Sports & Events Center, my initial reaction was something along the lines of, Can we give the first $80 million building a minute before we start talking about the next one?
After reviewing the presentation, I need to qualify that.
This is not an idea somebody dreamed up after the Sports Center opened. The group now known as Advocates for a Live Performance Venue traces its efforts back to 1996 in various forms.
According to the presentation, the effort includes performing arts organizations from across the three Historic Triangle localities. Groups identified include the Williamsburg Symphony Orchestra, Virginia Regional Ballet, Williamsburg Live and the Virginia Arts Festival, Williamsburg Youth Orchestra, Williamsburg International Arts Festival, Williamsburg Choral Guild and Williamsburg Players.
The presentation says those groups collectively represent approximately 80 to 90 existing event days, including rehearsal days.
That matters.
There is clearly a longstanding desire within our local arts community for a dedicated performance facility. This isn’t a room full of consultants who looked at a map last month and decided Williamsburg needed a concert hall. People in this community have been working toward some version of this idea for decades.
The current project has also been moving through a much more formal process for several years. The timeline presented shows activity beginning in 2022, development work with MEB and the Advocates for a Live Performance Venue in 2023, Tourism Development Fund money awarded to help design a venue, and a December 2023 request from Williamsburg City Council for the Historic Triangle Recreational Facilities Authority to study the concept.
Research, design work and presentations continued through 2024. The project was paused in early 2025 as the Sports Center moved toward substantial completion, and the performance venue proposal has now returned for presentation to HTRFA and the three localities.
So no, this isn’t a new idea.
It has been discussed, studied, designed, paused, revised and discussed some more. Knowing that history actually makes me take the proposal more seriously.
But it also makes me ask a fairly obvious question.
If we have been talking about the need for a performance venue in one form or another since 1996, shouldn’t we have some pretty damn good market data by now?
Thirty years is a long runway.
This Is Not a Half-Baked Proposal
Nobody can look at the presentation and fairly say this is a napkin sketch.
The project team shown in the presentation includes HTRFA, MEB as the design-builder, Clark Nexsen as lead architect and engineer, Henderson Engineers, IMG, the Virginia Arts Festival and additional architectural, engineering and design consultants.
I’ve looked at enough construction plans over the years to recognize the difference between a conceptual idea and a project that has moved significantly into design.
This has floor plans. It has back-of-house layouts. It has loading configurations, acoustic considerations, kitchen design, concession planning, dressing rooms, artist hospitality areas and crowd-circulation plans.
It has a construction schedule.
And it has a cost estimate down to the dollar.
This is a real proposal.
Which is precisely why I think it deserves real scrutiny.
Let’s Talk About $83,087,174
The presentation identifies a total design-build cost of $83,087,174. The cost summary shows approximately $75.39 million for the live performance venue, $6.44 million for theater equipment and $1.26 million for food and beverage equipment.
However you slice it, this is a major regional investment.
It’s also considerably different from the roughly $33 million performance venue concept I wrote about several years ago. I understand that we’re not comparing apples to apples. This proposal is bigger, considerably more sophisticated and combines indoor and outdoor venues.
But we’re now talking about an investment roughly comparable in scale to the new Sports & Events Center itself.
Naturally, I wanted to know what the consultants believe we’re getting for that money.
The Projection Is 83 Event Days and 141,400 Attendees a Year
According to the Victus analysis included in the presentation, a stabilized year of operations could include 83 event days annually between the indoor and outdoor facilities.
The indoor venue is projected to host 24 orchestra event days, 16 theater event days, 10 ballet event days and eight commercial event days. That’s 58 indoor event days.
The outdoor amphitheater is projected to host another 25 commercial event days.
Victus estimates total annual attendance of approximately 141,400 people.
That’s the number that really caught my attention.
The entire Historic Triangle has a population of roughly 100,000 people. Obviously, that doesn’t mean the same 100,000 people have to attend every event, but it makes one thing pretty clear: this cannot simply be a venue for local residents.
This facility has to become a regional draw.
It has to attract people from Richmond and Hampton Roads. It has to capture tourists who are already visiting Williamsburg. Ideally, it also has to convince some people to travel specifically to Williamsburg because of an event.
That’s a much bigger assignment than simply giving local residents a nicer place to see a show.
Now Let Me Put on My Realtor Hat
I have spent more than two decades pricing houses, and one of the harder conversations I occasionally have is with a homeowner who tells me what they believe their house should be worth.
They love the house. They spent a fortune on the kitchen. The county assessment says one thing. Zillow says something else. Their neighbor sold for X.
Ultimately, none of that determines the value.
The buyer does.
A house is worth what somebody is willing to pay for it.
I think the same basic principle applies here.
We can love the idea of a performance venue. We can create beautiful renderings. We can commission studies and calculate hotel nights, restaurant spending and economic impact.
Ultimately, the ticket buyer decides whether this works.
The Victus projection calls for approximately 141,400 annual attendees. The estimated average attendance is roughly 700 people for orchestra events, 700 for theater, 700 for ballet and 800 for indoor commercial events.
Then we get to the outdoor venue.
The projection is 25 outdoor commercial event days with average attendance of 4,000 people per event.
That’s 100,000 outdoor attendees a year.
I had to read that number twice.
The consultants are essentially projecting that this 5,000-person amphitheater will average about 80% of capacity 25 times a year.
Maybe it can.
I’m not saying it can’t.
But that’s a pretty substantial assumption, and the outdoor amphitheater appears to carry an enormous amount of the projected annual attendance.
Which brings me back to the same question.
Who Is Playing There?
Seriously. Give me names.
I don’t mean that sarcastically.
If we’re discussing an $83 million venue and projecting 25 outdoor commercial event days with roughly 4,000 attendees at each one, I would love to see a hypothetical first-year calendar.
Give me 25 artists or events.
Real ones.
Who is touring? Who fits a 5,000-person outdoor venue? Who can realistically sell 4,000 tickets in Williamsburg? Who is the promoter? What guarantees will the artists require? What are the routing opportunities?
And perhaps most importantly, why Williamsburg?
We’re not building this venue in a vacuum.
Richmond has the Allianz Amphitheater and The National. Virginia Beach has The Dome. Norfolk has The NorVa. Newport News has the Ferguson Center. ODU has Chartway Arena. William & Mary has its own performance spaces, and there are numerous other theaters and venues scattered throughout Richmond and Hampton Roads.
Look specifically at the proposed Williamsburg indoor venue. Its general-admission capacity is approximately 1,700.
The National is around 1,500. The NorVa is around 1,500. The Ferguson Center’s main hall is roughly 1,700.
We would be jumping directly into one of the most competitive venue sizes in the regional touring market.
That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do it.
But I want to understand the competitive advantage.
Being halfway between Richmond and Hampton Roads sounds wonderful on a map. In the entertainment business, it could be an advantage.
It could also mean you’re halfway between two established entertainment markets.
That’s a question worth answering.
Williamsburg Live May Already Give Us Part of the Answer
We don’t have to completely guess about Williamsburg’s appetite for live music.
We’ve had Williamsburg Live. We’ve brought nationally recognized performers here. We’ve sold tickets and watched people fill the lawn.
So I would love to see those numbers.
Not simply estimated economic impact. I want to know how many tickets were actually sold, what the average ticket price was, what the artists cost, what production and security cost, what sponsors contributed and what public or tourism support was involved.
Did the events make money? Break even? Lose money?
There is no shame in any of those answers. Plenty of worthwhile community events receive financial support.
But if we’re projecting 100,000 annual outdoor attendees at a new amphitheater, Williamsburg Live may be one of the best real-world market tests we have.
Maybe those numbers prove the consultants are being conservative.
If they do, show me.
That might move me off the fence.
The Financial Projection Is Where I Really Started Digging
The Victus analysis projects that the venue itself could generate a modest operating profit.
In year one, projected operating revenue is approximately $2.304 million, against roughly $2.116 million in operating expenses, producing an estimated operating margin of $187,885.
By year five, projected revenue grows to approximately $2.614 million, with expenses of roughly $2.382 million and an estimated operating margin of approximately $232,429.
The projected operating margin runs roughly 8% to 9% over the first five years.
I’m a Realtor. I’m not a municipal finance expert.
But I own rental properties, and I’ve renovated enough houses to recognize a relatively thin cushion.
A projected $232,000 annual operating margin on an $83 million facility doesn’t leave a tremendous amount of room for surprises. A major equipment failure, unexpected capital expense, increased insurance costs, higher security expenses, rising labor costs, a cancelled artist or several weather-affected outdoor events can change the math pretty quickly.
To be fair, the Victus numbers appear to be an operating analysis. They are not presented as a return on the $83 million construction investment.
Those are two completely different things.
But that’s exactly why the financing question becomes so important.
Who services the debt?
The projected operating margin certainly doesn’t appear capable of financing an $83 million project by itself.
That’s not a minor detail.
That’s the elephant sitting in the orchestra section.
The $1.51 Million Fiscal Impact Number Is Important—but Let’s Understand What It Means
The Victus analysis also projects a substantial fiscal impact for Williamsburg, James City County and York County.
Under the base analysis, the presentation estimates approximately $651,184 in annual incremental local tax collections. The projection allocates approximately $167,942 to the City of Williamsburg, $227,226 to James City County and $256,016 to York County.
The presentation then models additional multi-day events.
With four additional annual multi-day events, the projected combined fiscal impact increases to roughly $988,000. Six additional events brings the estimate to approximately $1.08 million.
Under the most aggressive scenario presented—12 additional multi-day events annually—the projected combined local fiscal impact rises to approximately $1.51 million a year.
That’s real money.
It deserves attention.
But we also need to be very clear about what it is.
That $1.51 million is not venue profit.
It is projected incremental tax collections generated through hotel stays, sales taxes, prepared food and beverage taxes, transient occupancy taxes and other local tax sources.
That’s absolutely part of the economic argument for the project.
But a venue can generate substantial tax revenue for local governments and still require public money for debt service, capital improvements or operating support.
Both things can be true at the same time.
The Visitor Spending Projections Are Equally Impressive
The presentation estimates approximately $17.9 million in total economic output under the base analysis.
With four additional multi-day events, the projection grows to roughly $22 million. Six additional events pushes the projection to approximately $27.5 million.
With 12 additional multi-day events, the estimate rises to approximately $35 million in total economic output.
The hotel-night projections are equally eye-catching. The base analysis estimates approximately 7,918 hotel room nights. Under the 12-event multi-day scenario, that number grows to approximately 45,300 room nights.
I understand exactly why tourism and economic development officials look at those numbers and get excited.
Hotel guests spend money. They eat breakfast. They buy gas. They have dinner. They shop. They visit attractions. They pay lodging taxes and meals taxes.
The presentation’s economic model assumes out-of-town visitors spend considerably more in the local economy than local attendees.
That may be the strongest economic argument for the project.
But again, I have a question.
What exactly are the 12 additional three-day events?
Are we talking about music festivals? Dance competitions? Corporate gatherings? Choir festivals? Theater conferences?
Maybe all of the above.
But “12 additional multi-day events” looks fantastic on a spreadsheet.
I want to know what those events look like in the real world.
I Want to See More of the Assumptions Behind the Feasibility Study
According to the presentation, Victus was engaged by Advocates for a Live Performance Venue to conduct market-demand, financial-feasibility and economic-impact analysis.
The study reportedly included demographic and socioeconomic analysis, live music industry trend analysis, interviews and focus groups with local performing arts organizations, interviews with regional and national commercial concert organizers, competitive venue analysis and market-demand assessment.
That’s exactly the type of work that should be done.
I would simply like to see more of it.
Which commercial concert organizers were interviewed? What did they say? Which comparable venues were analyzed? How did Victus arrive at 25 outdoor commercial event days? How did it arrive at average outdoor attendance of 4,000 people? What ticket prices were assumed? What weather assumptions were built into the model? How many poorly attended or cancelled events were factored in?
The presentation describes a stabilized year of operations in which the venue could host up to 83 events and approximately 141,400 attendees annually.
“Could” is an important word.
I’ve been selling houses for more than 20 years. I can tell a homeowner their house could sell for $1 million.
But I’d better have some pretty damn good comparable sales before we put the sign in the yard.
I Still Think We Need to Give the Sports Center a Minute
As I mentioned earlier, I initially questioned the timing of this conversation because the Greater Williamsburg Sports & Events Center has barely opened.
After reviewing the history of the performance venue effort, I understand that the two projects have developed on separate timelines and that the performance venue concept predates the Sports Center’s opening by decades.
But the Sports Center still matters enormously to this discussion.
The site plan makes the broader vision much clearer. The Sports Center, the proposed performance venue and the Colonial Williamsburg Visitor Center property are being envisioned as interconnected pieces of a much larger destination campus.
Sports. Entertainment. Colonial Williamsburg. Hotels. Restaurants. Interstate access.
I can see the vision.
Actually, after looking at the site plan, I understand the vision considerably better than I did before.
But the Sports Center has just opened. We don’t yet have meaningful operating history. We don’t know the actual annual hotel-night generation. We don’t know the long-term tournament demand. We don’t know the true operating subsidy. We don’t know how many sports visitors will extend their stay or how much crossover there will be between sports visitors and entertainment visitors.
Those aren’t criticisms.
They’re simply things we don’t know yet because the building just opened.
The proposed performance venue schedule itself shows a lengthy process, including approvals, roughly 22 months of construction and additional completion work.
This isn’t happening next Tuesday.
We have time to gather data. We have time to study the Sports Center. We have time to watch Richmond’s new amphitheater and The Dome in Virginia Beach. We have time to examine Williamsburg Live’s actual results and test some of these assumptions.
Eighty-three million dollars deserves patience.
The Presentation Actually Moved Me
I’ll admit something.
Before I went through the actual presentation, I was probably leaning more toward no.
I’m not anymore.
I’m still on the fence, but I understand the proposal considerably better.
I understand that members of our arts community have been working toward this for decades. I understand that participating organizations already represent 80 to 90 event and rehearsal days. I understand this isn’t simply a concert hall. I understand the professional level of the proposed facility and the logic behind combining an indoor performance center with an outdoor amphitheater.
I understand the site plan better.
And I understand why tourism and economic development officials look at the multi-day event projections and get excited.
There may be something here.
But here’s the irony.
The more seriously I take the proposal, the more seriously I take the numbers.
The design is impressive. The professional team is impressive. The history of the effort is impressive. The economic-impact projections are certainly impressive.
Now show me the audience.
Because ultimately, an $83 million performance venue without enough ticket buyers is just a very expensive building with excellent acoustics.
I’m Still a “Show Me”
I’m not a yes, and I’m not a no.
I’m a show me.
Show me the 25 outdoor events. Show me the artists and the promoter relationships. Show me the ticket assumptions. Show me Williamsburg Live’s actual attendance and financial history. Show me the 12 multi-day events. Show me how we realistically get to 45,300 hotel room nights.
Show me the financing structure and the debt service. Show me who pays for major capital replacements 15 or 20 years from now.
And show me what happens if 141,400 attendees turns out to be 100,000.
Or 80,000.
If those answers make sense, I’ll happily get off the fence. Hell, I’ll probably be standing in line for opening night.
But at $83 million, I don’t think asking hard questions makes somebody anti-arts, anti-tourism or anti-growth.
It makes them a taxpayer.
Before Greater Williamsburg builds the stage, I’d still like to know who’s actually coming to the show.
So what do you think? Would you support an $83 million indoor-outdoor performance venue in Greater Williamsburg? Would you actually attend five, 10 or 15 events there every year?
And here’s the question I really want answered:
Who would you actually pay to see in Williamsburg?
A Note on My Research and Analysis
For this article, I spent considerable time reviewing the actual presentation materials and digging into the proposal in detail, including the project’s history, design, proposed event utilization, attendance projections, operating margins, fiscal impact, visitor spending projections and comparable performance venues throughout Richmond and Hampton Roads.
The analysis, opinions and questions expressed here are entirely my own.
I’m not an economist or a municipal finance expert. I’m a Realtor, a longtime Williamsburg resident, a live music fan and someone who has spent more than two decades looking at numbers, construction costs, projections and, perhaps most importantly, whether the market actually supports the price being asked.
I believe an $83 million public conversation deserves more than a pretty rendering and a few big economic-impact numbers. My goal here isn’t to kill the idea or sell it. It’s to look at the information that’s been presented, ask the questions I think deserve answers and hopefully encourage a broader community conversation about whether this project makes sense for Greater Williamsburg.
I’m still on the fence. But at least now, I’m on the fence after reading the numbers.
About John Womeldorf | Mr. Williamsburg
I’m John Womeldorf—better known around town as Mr. Williamsburg. I’ve lived in the Williamsburg area for more than 20 years and have spent more than two decades helping buyers and sellers navigate real estate throughout Greater Williamsburg and across Hampton Roads and Central Virginia.
I also write about the communities, developments, history, restaurants, people and occasionally the big ideas shaping the place I call home. Sometimes I have an opinion. Sometimes I simply have a lot of questions.
If you’re thinking about buying or selling a home, reach out to me directly at 757-254-8136 or john@mrwilliamsburg.com, or visit Mr. Williamsburg. You can also explore my neighborhood guides from Virginia Beach to Richmond.
John Womeldorf | Mr. Williamsburg
Realtor. Resident. Live music fan. And, at least on this one, still sitting squarely on the fence.