A big “O” that’s been building for decades in Michigan’s capital city is closer to reality.
Today the city of Lansing unveiled a set of glassy, glamorous exterior views and detailed floor plans for its long-awaited downtown music complex, the Ovation Center for Music and Arts.
Along with the sexy renderings of the exterior, designed by Detroit-based Albert Kahn Associates, the city unveiled a glitzy branding campaign by Redhead Design Studio, centered on a big “O” with sound waves throbbing from every side, destined for myriad forms of merchandise and social media.
Those sound waves aren’t just for show. A $1.25 million grant from the Dart Foundation, earmarked specifically for a state-of-the-art lighting and sound system for the Ovation, was also announced today.
It’s not the full-scale performing arts center that danced in the heads of several administrations, going back to former Mayor David Hollister, but was finally dropped in 2019 as beyond reach, at $60 million to $80 million. The $28 million Ovation is laser-focused on putting the city back onto the national music and entertainment map for the first time since the old Civic Center was torn down in 1999. It’s intended to bring touring rock, pop, hip-hop, country, comedy and other artists, while hosting a wide range of community-based events and educational programs.
The main hall has a capacity of 1,530 seated, or 2,025 standing concertgoers. A smaller, black box theater with a capacity of 150 to 200 people is also part of the design, and planners hope to find a restaurant partner for the upper floor.
The undulating, glassy façade promises to light up the southwest corner of Washington Square and Lenawee Street, beckoning passersby in cars or on foot, and activate the city’s downtown housing-based, post-pandemic COVID renewal.
A patchwork of state, federal and private donor funds will pay for the facility, anchored by the capture of a projected $8.5 million in PEG, or cable franchise fees, made possible by the participation of the Ovation’s permanent tenant, the Lansing Public Media Center.
Dominic Cochran, founding director of the Ovation project and former director of the Media Center, said no general city funds will be used to build the Ovation, and a primary goal is to operate the facility solely on proceeds from concert, rental and restaurant revenue.
“Our north star is no general fund dollars and no subsidies,” Cochran said.
Above-ground construction is expected to begin in the spring, when the big “O” branding will be plastered all over construction fences and barriers surrounding the site, building anticipation for the planned opening in late 2026.
Fresh sheet of paper
Ground officially broke on the Ovation over a year ago, in July 2023, but most of the work has been hidden from view, as workers refurbish the only structure standing on the site, the former Lansing Credit Bureau building, into the new home of the Public Media Center.
In early renderings of the facility, by Lansing-based Studio Intrigue Architects, the Ovation looks much like other recent mixed-use developments along Michigan Avenue, with a few Art Deco flourishes suggesting an old movie palace. It was hard to tell if the project was forward-looking, nostalgic or just sitting there.
In the designs unveiled today, it looks more like the game-changer its planners hope it will be.
When the Kahn firm got the bid as architecture and engineering partner of the Ovation, Andrew Stone, the firm’s architect and operations lead, asked for a “fresh sheet of paper.”
“I appreciate the design Studio Intrigue had done. It had some really nice qualities,” Stone said. “But we really wanted to challenge some of that, with respect to materials, technology, the flexibility to evolve over time.”
The guiding concept is “visual transparency,” according to Michael Giovanni, Kahn’s design director.
“We don’t want to hide it,” Giovanni told a donor group at a July meeting. “What a great site, because you’re on the corner. It has a really strong urban connection. Let’s bring it out.”
The new design, as Stone described it, has “more glass, more opportunities for connection to the city, both for people walking back and forth or people walking to and through the space.”
“We want people to be able to stop at a light on the corner, glance over and get a glimpse of what’s going on inside,” he said.
The Kahn team had the option of refining the earlier design into a set of detailed, buildable plans, but that’s not why you hire a firm founded by pioneering industrial architect Albert Kahn.
Albert Kahn Associates was chosen mainly because it was the lowest bidder, Cochran said, but the firm’s peerless 129-year pedigree didn’t hurt.
Albert Kahn was best known for groundbreaking, large-scaled industrial designs, including the former Motor Wheel factory in Lansing, once the nation’s largest manufacturer of wheels, now home to Motor Wheel lofts.
However, Kahn and his firm also designed several high-profile arts and music venues, including Hill Auditorium in Ann Arbor in 1913 and its recent restoration. Albert Kahn Associates also contributed to significant recent work on the Detroit Opera House and the Detroit School of Arts.
“We know firsthand how transformative a project such as the Ovation Center for Music and Arts can be for a community,” President and CEO Kimberly Montague said.
Stone and his team took the whole block back to the drawing board, “to see if there were opportunities for more design exploration,” Stone said.
The firm’s history of cutting-edge industrial design can be glimpsed under the glassy glitz.
“We were working with materials like steel and concrete and exploring almost an industrial esthetic, versus more polished ones,” Stone said.
The idea of a “universal space” goes back to Kahn’s earliest and most significant industrial designs, and it applied just as readily to a space meant to appeal to a diverse range of audiences.
“Automotive plants are a vastly different market, but a lot of the flexibility, a space that can be used for any number of purposes, is at the core of who we are,” Stone said.
As the final design took shape, the creative tension between Kahn’s staff and the local Ovation team pushed the exterior toward a more welcoming and accessible look.
Undulations in the façade were designed to “break down the massiveness of the building, make it more approachable and human scale,” Stone said.
In the most recent set of images, wooden support poles were added to the exterior overhang, to bear its weight more cost-effectively and soften the glassy, modern edge of the design.
Stone said the poles are the “biggest design move we’ve made over time,” and were added after consulting with Cochran and his team.
Researching other venues around the country, Cochran and the local Ovation team studied some of their favorite music spots, including two vibrant Brooklyn venues, Elsewhere and The House of Yes, and Spot Lite in Detroit. “Those venues in particular have a decidedly non-industrial, lived-in vibe,” Cochran said. “Our north star in terms of audience experience is to be memorable and inclusive.”
The Kahn design team exploited a 5-foot slope in the project site to slip in a set of internal terraces and seating areas where people can hang out before and after a performance.
“The goal is to be the venue that you want to arrive at when doors open, as opposed to timing your arrival as closely to the headliner as you possibly can, and then bouncing just before or right after the encore,” Cochran said.
Stone said the venue has the potential to be a “third place,” besides home or work, where people are encouraged to gather.
“That kind of visibility helps to break down a perceived barrier, where it doesn’t feel like it’s secretive what’s happening in there,” he said.
When it comes to universal design, architects have some fancy tools in their box Kahn never imagined.
The art of projected colors, textures and imagery has been developed to an astounding level of sophistication in venues around the world. Listeners can augment their experience by floating in a coral reef, whizzing through the center of the galaxy or confronting faces and places from anywhere in space and time.
“You can completely change the aesthetics of a space without building out something that would alienate other audiences or performers,” Stone said.
‘Diverse and unique’
What kinds of sounds and sights will fill the Ovation?
“The goal is to offer the most diverse and unique set of offerings to the community that we possibly can,” Cochran said.
To prime the pump, the Ovation team launched a Spotify playlist today featuring “legendary Michigan artists.” Cochran wouldn’t make any promises, but a gala opening week packed with local heroes like Billy Strings, Lord Huron and Stevie Wonder would be a grand showcase for the Ovation.
The Lansing Public Media Authority will run the venue, but a mix of local and national players will curate the shows.
“We will employ a spectrum of in-house talent buying, indie regional promoters, as well as bigger names like Live Nation and AEG,” (Alderac Entertainment Group), Cochran said. “The room will be independent and open to all comers who are ready to bring memorable experiences to our audiences.”
While looking at venues around the country similar in ambition and scope to the Ovation, Stone said his team’s research concentrated on venues that serve the Michigan market. These included GLC Live at 20 Monroe, a 2,600-seat concert venue in Grand Rapids; El Club, a popular stand-up venue in southwest Detroit that has hosted stars from Insane Clown Posse to Lizzo and Billie Eilish; the venerable, 1,000-capacity St. Andrews Hall in Detroit’s Bricktown, where just about everybody from Eminem to the Red Hot Chili Peppers have played; and Sound Board at Motor City Casino, a 2,400-seat venue that serves an older age group with casino circuit favorites like Lalah Hathaway, Too $hort, The Stylistics and Kenny G.
Cochran is already networking with booking agents via the National Independent Venue Association.
“They know this is coming, and they’re excited,” he said. “These people are motivated to book shows for their artists.”
Cochran said the Ovation will be an independent venue, accessible to local community groups like the Refugee Development Center and the Firecracker Foundation at a low cost for banquets, fundraisers and other events. He said the facility will draw a “line of demarcation” between ticketed, forprofit events and community events.
Members of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stag Employees, or IATSE, will still do the sound, lighting and other setup work for ticketed concerts, but community events like fundraisers and banquets will be subject to relaxed rules, to keep costs low.
“Events below a certain budget threshold should be able to set up their own chairs,” Cochran said.
Cochran expects to start with at least $1 million for operating expenses on hand, but by opening night, ticket and rental revenue will already be rolling in.
“The first offers for the first shows will go out in November of next year,” Cochran said. “We have two years to open, but we have to start planning way in advance.”
The Ovation will carefully coordinate its calendar with Grewal Hall, a nearby event and concert venue with a standing capacity of 900, and the two venues may even collaborate on coordinating related events.
“We’re resurrecting a music scene here,” Cochran said. “But it’s not to the point where we can have two punk rock shows on the same night. We need to make sure the calendars make sense together.”
Two options are being considered for the restaurant planned on the Ovation’s third floor.
“We’re either going to find a partner that’s going to go full-service, four season,” Cochran said, “or the venue will run it, and it will be more of a lounge — seasonal, limited drink and food menu, with a small four-season component.”
Cochran described the top-notch lighting and sound system, funded by the $1.25 million donation from the Dart Foundation announced today, as “the last piece of the puzzle,” but that’s not quite true.
For about $1 million more, the Ovation could be fitted out with state of the art, retractable seating system. Such systems are used to toggle venues from flat-floor rock concerts to cushily seated concerts in minutes. Systems that are already in place in stadiums, university auditoriums and music venues around the world show that the technology is well advanced, with myriad variations.
“We are building a place that can accommodate that storage system,” Cochran said. “I have two years to raise that million, and I’m going to do it.”
Silver lining
How long has Lansing waited for a downtown concert venue? The results of a feasibility study from the late 1990s are still sitting in a closet in Cochran’s office, in two banker’s boxes.
“There’s no digital version,” Cochran said. It’s not even on floppy discs. “It’s good stuff, and I still refer to it sometimes.”
Cochran was 26 when he started working for the city in April 2001, when David Hollister was still mayor.
The project has suffered no end of false starts and real stops, but Cochran said there’s a “silver lining” to the long wait.
The city’s former mid-size concert venue, the Lansing Civic Center at 525 Allegan St., renamed the Lansing Civic Arena in 1987, was home to a staggering array of pop artists, from Adam Ant to ZZ Top. The center was demolished in 1999, when a plan to turn it into city offices foundered.
“People forget that the Civic Center was already 40 years old when it was sold to the state in 1997,” Cochran said.
“It was at a crossroads. It was going to need a bunch of money to modernize it.”
If a large performing arts center had been built in the 1990s, or if the Civic Center had gotten a costly renovation, the facility would have faced serious challenges.
“It was huge, a 6,500-person venue,” Cochran said. “I’m not sure we could have supported a venue of that size in the intervening 20 years, with the population loss, two recessions. We’re learning now that we need that 2,000-seat venue.”
The downtown Lansing Convention Center, built in 1987 and expanded in 1995, took on the convention and events traffic formerly hosted at the Civic Center.
But the other shoe — a performing arts center — never dropped.
“We wanted to get an arts center, and were really close to getting one,” Hollister told City Pulse in 2021. “We had money put in the budget to do a financial analysis. Gov. John Engler, who was not exactly my friend, put $500,000 in the budget to do some preliminary work. The wheels came off the buggy in the Great Recession.”
Cochran said there never was “a nuts and bolts financial plan” for a performing arts center.
“It was like, ‘Let’s hope people get excited and we can raise the money when it comes,’” he said. “They were seeing which way the wind was blowing, and it wasn’t going to happen. So this, finally, is the second part of replacing the Civic Center, 20 years later.”
A key piece of the project’s revival came in 2006, when Mayor Virg Bernero lobbied the state Legislature to enable the city to capture $8.5 million in PEG fees, part of the franchise fees cable companies pay the city in exchange for running their cables in public rights-of-way.
By state law, 2 percent of the gross revenues must be used for capital investments.
“If the city took those dollars and used them to fill potholes or hire firefighters, it would be violating state law,” Cochran said. “This is dedicated arts funding and a once-in-a-lifetime funding opportunity.”
At first, it was planned for the PEG money to fund a new Public Media Center in the former Holmes Street School, recently converted into apartments.
“It would be great. People love to use it,” Cochran said. “But it would be another city building that would not produce revenue and would need help.”
Why not think bigger? All kinds of downtown dreams were stirring back to life at the dawn of the 21st century, from the rescue of the Ottawa Power Station to new housing builds like Stadium District and The Outfield. A new hotel and a downtown market were in the offing. With the participation of the Public Media Center, the PEG funds could form the nucleus of a funding package for the long-dreamt-of performing arts center.
But finding the Goldilocks spot was a bumpy process. In 2019, a national theater consultant told the city that a full-scale performing arts center, with a fly tower (theatrical rigging system) and acoustics good enough for the Lansing Symphony Orchestra, would cost $60 million to $80 million. The next year, financial consultants told the city the project was not feasible, owing largely to “donor fatigue” and the lack of a deep-pocketed donor in greater Lansing.
But the consultants reported that a facility in the 2,000-seat range, targeted to fill the gap in music and entertainment market for national acts that would otherwise perform in Detroit or Grand Rapids, priced in the $10 million to $20 million range, would work.
It meant giving up on the traditional performing arts center dream, but it opened a different door.
“We were not able to end up building a facility where the symphony can come perform their MasterWorks acoustically,” Cochran said. “What we have built is a place where they can, theoretically, be doing programs they’re not even doing yet, things that are experimental and geared toward different and younger audiences.”
Lansing Symphony music director Timothy Muffitt praised the Ovation, “not only for the new and exciting offerings it will provide, but also for its contribution to the continued growth of the vitality of our downtown area.”
“While the resources were not available to build a venue that could house our orchestral performances, we will keep this new space in mind as we consider our future artistic planning,” Muffitt said.
Once the downscaled project came into focus, more financial pieces fell into place. In 2021, then-state Sen. Curtis Hertel and then-Rep. Sarah Anthony secured $2 million for the facility from the state Legislature. A $5 million grant from the Michigan Strategic Fund, administered by the Michigan Economic Development Corp., followed in 2023, along with $750,000 in federal funds. On June 28, 2023, MSUFCU President and CEO April Clobes presented a $1 million check to the city to secure naming rights for five years. A brownfield plan, approved by MEDC and the City Council, opened up a significant stream of funds that will be used to pay off the bonds issued by the city to finance construction. The budget was set at $28 million, and the figure has held steady, despite recent inflationary pressures, Cochran said.
Above ground construction will start to show in the spring of 2025.
“I’m excited to see the snow melt, and we don’t even have snow yet,” Schor said at July’s donor meeting. “When the snow melts, we start seeing footings in the ground, things like that.”
Schor described the Ovation not only as the fulfillment of a long-held dream for Lansing, but also as “one of the biggest pieces of the downtown puzzle.”
“We know state workers are not coming back the way they were,” he said. “We’re building 400 or 500 units of housing. We’re going to have a new city hall, a new hotel, a new streetscape. We’re really going to see a new downtown in three or four years.”
Ovation by the numbers
Estimated construction cost: $28,000,000
City of Lansing Bond issue: $20,000,000
(to be repaid by future PEG fees and Brownfield reimbursements)
Michigan Strategic Fund Grant: $5,000,000
State of Michigan Appropriation: $2,000,000
Federal Appropriation (via HUD): $750,000
Naming rights/fundraising $2,585,000
PEG Fees on hand $2,555,933
Total project funds: $32,890,933
Source: Dominic Cochran, Ovation Center for Music and Arts
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