Kansas City Symphony will build new venue. Here’s why and where
The Kansas City Symphony plans to break ground on a new Plaza-area concert venue in 2026.
The music hall, located on the vacant land to the south of the Kansas City Public Library’s Plaza branch, will seat 4,600 for touring concerts and film with live orchestra performances, according to a Symphony press release.
The venue at 4901 Main St. will be designed for “contemporary touring artists” who use microphones, unlike the acoustically focused Helzberg Hall at the Kauffman Center, which seats 1,600.
Symphony CEO Danny Beckley told The Star that the Kauffman Center “will always be our home, even after this venue opens.” He plans for the Symphony to host over 100 shows a year at the Crossroads hall, built in 2011.
Beckley said the still-unnamed concert hall will bring different artists to the metro, in addition to funding the Symphony’s classical music.
“A number of (our peer symphony orchestras) have found that this is a really important way to sustain themselves, by presenting music, not only performing it,” Beckley said.
“I think this is a venue that Kansas City deserves.”
Unknown cost
As of March 25, the Symphony declined to share how much the facility’s construction would cost.
They also did not disclose how much had already been raised.
However, Claire Martin, spokesperson for the Symphony, wrote in an email, “We’ve secured sufficient funding to confidently proceed with this project.”
The hall will be financed with donations, private loans, partnerships and future revenue, Martin shared.
The Kansas City Symphony is a resident company at the Kauffman Center, along with the Kansas City Ballet and the Lyric Opera. It is the only one of the three to regularly use Helzberg Hall, the Kauffman Center’s concert hall.
Outside of the symphony, other performers will take the Helzberg Hall stage in the coming months, including the Kansas City Jazz Orchestra, The Friends of Chamber Music Kansas City, high school groups and author David Sedaris.
‘Dancing with the Stars’ to Sting
While the Symphony will build and own the venue, Cincinnati-based Music and Event Management, Inc. will operate it. A subsidiary of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, MEMI books acts at seven Ohio venues, along with shows in Michigan and South Carolina.
Upcoming shows at MEMI’s 4,500-seat Andrew J. Brady Music Theater include rock band Boys Like Girls, Dancing with the Stars Live, rapper Jack Harlow and singer-songwriter Sting.
Beckley told The Star the concert hall’s medium size will set it apart from Kansas City’s other venues, which have larger or smaller capacities.
“The opportunity is to bring new artists to this community that are not regularly here, that are skipping over Kansas City for lack of a venue like this.”
An abundance of arts projects
The new concert hall announcement comes as multiple Kansas City organizations ask for donations for major facility additions. In October, Starlight Theatre paused construction on a $40 million overhaul because the organization had not raised enough money.
Last year, the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art chose a design for its $170 million expansion, funded by private donors.
And as of last April, the University of Missouri-Kansas City still needed to raise half of the $35 million needed to expand its performing arts conservatory space.
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When asked if the new project could strain Kansas City arts donors, Beckley said that the Symphony doesn’t “come at this from a position of scarcity. We come at this from a position of opportunity, and this is going to enliven the art scene here.”
The South Plaza location is just south of the Country Club Plaza, between the Plaza and UMKC streetcar stops. The lot previously held a US Bank, which was demolished in 2022. The Symphony confirmed it will not demolish the Miller and Company law offices to the south, nor the townhouses at the northwest corner of 50th and Walnut.
The Symphony tapped Kansas City-based Populous and McCownGordon to lead the design and build of the structure.
Mayor Quinton Lucas said the project is a strong addition to KC’s musical legacy.
“Kansas City Symphony’s new music venue will put Kansas City exactly where we belong: on every tour, every time, cementing our place as one of America’s great music cities,” Lucas said.
Royals connection
Plans for the new venue have floated around Kansas City’s arts scene for a time.
On March 5, a Star reporter received an invitation to a cocktail hour on March 26 to present plans for “a new amplified music venue in Kansas City.”
The invitation states “John & Marny Sherman invite you.” Marny Sherman is the vice chair of the Symphony’s board of directors, and John Sherman is the Royals chairman and CEO.
The cocktail event was scheduled to take place at the couple’s home off of Ward Parkway.
The Star requested to speak to Marny Sherman about the plans, but a Symphony spokesperson said she was not available.
Kansas City’s concert venues
Here are the capacities of Kansas-City area music venues:
- T-Mobile Center: up to 20,000 people
- Morton Amphitheater: 16,000 people
- Starlight Theatre: 7,800 people
- Cable Dahmer Arena: up to 7,000 people
- Planned Symphony-owned venue: 4,600 people
- Midland Theatre: up to 3,000 people
- Uptown Theatre: up to 2,400 people
- Muriel Kauffman Theatre: 1,800 people
- Helzberg Hall at the Kauffman Center: 1,600 people