Industry Noize: U.S. Bank Arena Expands

The former Riverfront Coliseum is reconfiguring its stage and bowl to make room for an additional 1,300 seats. The venerable arena has a current capacity of more than 17,000 and, as home to the ECHL Cincinnati Cyclones hockey team, two locker rooms and outdated greenroom and dressing room space that could use some spiffing up, according to GM Kristin Ropp.

Expanding seating and enlarging the stage is just one part of an ongoing U.S. Bank Arena update, Ropp told Pollstar.

In order to submit a competitive bid to host NCAA basketball tournament regionals, an expansion to four locker rooms is on the wish list, as are larger dressing and green rooms.

“The struggle now is just to find the pocket of time that allows us to do that,” Ropp said. The first order of business, though, is the capacity and stage expansion. By removing some permanent seating on the sides to allow the present stage to be pushed upstage, the venue now has a wider stage and more floor capacity, according to Ropp.

“There’s nothing specific to the stage – we’re just removing the permanent seats that were creating a pitch point for pushing the stage, building the stage further upstage and placing it, and therefore allowing for a bigger sellable capacity,” Ropp explained. “It’s giving us more floor seating capacity and expanding the sellable permanent capacity of the bowl seats. It all gets put back together neatly because of what we took out. Permanent seats we’re replacing with telescopic, retractable seating.”

Expansion of U.S. Bank Arena’s locker rooms and artist dressing/green rooms is on the drawing board, though a start date hasn’t been penciled in.

“The main motivation for that work is to make the artist experience at the arena more comfortable,” Ropp said. “Shows aren’t getting much smaller, they’re getting bigger with more need for green room and dressing room space. The additional locker room space we’re looking to add on to that event level is the result of us trying to work with the city and the sports core to bring in NCAA events that require four permanent locker rooms.”

Some in the community would like to see a complete renovation, and complain U.S. Bank Arena and the Cincinnati market are losing concert and convention business to newer, shinier buildings in the region. Ropp acknowledges recent criticism, including the loss of a bid to host the 2015 Republican National Convention, but makes no apologies.

A look at the building’s box office reports reflects a healthy calendar, including recent concerts with Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band, Eagles and an upcoming Bruno Mars gig.

“Everybody has an opinion, and that’s fine,” Ropp said. “So everybody seems to be locally chiming in on what they’d like to see in our facility but the reality is, it’s a privately owned building and we pay for our own upgrades and don’t ask anybody to help us with that.” U.S. Bank Arena is owned by Nederlander Entertainment, one of several companies owned by the Nederlander Organization including Nederlander Concerts.

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