Hope Springs Eternal With New Colombia Venue

PRIMAVERA REAL ESATE: Arena Primavera, a 16,000-capacity venue designed by HOK, will boast suites and club seats. It is part of a larger project that will develop housing as well as restaurants and green spaces for the community of Sabaneta near Medellín. (Rendering Courtesy CLK Group)

Colombia is a nation that helps the world get through the day as a major exporter of oil, coal and coffee.The South American country is just as essential to the music industry as one of the great producers of talent with acts like Karol G and Shakira taking over stadiums across the globe and dominating streaming and sales charts. The nation’s cultural boom has elevated Latin music and all of its subgenres to never-before-seen heights, and the country’s due for another major venue.

Enter Arena Primavera (Spring Arena), a 16,000-capacity facility in the municipality of Sabaneta that aspires to build a cultural hub near Medellín, the country’s second largest city with a population surpassing 4.4 million.

The multipurpose arena is estimated to cost about $55 million and is being funded by the CLK Group, an entertainment company that owns and operates Movistar Arena in Bogotá, as well as ticketing company Tuboleta and promoter Breakfast Club.

Gabriel Sanchez, chief strategy officer for CLK, said they were receiving bids in October and hoped to break ground as early as December. With construction requiring at least two years, the entertainment consortium expects Arena Primera to open its doors in 2027. HOK, the U.S. architecture firm that has offices around the globe, is designing the new building.

“The project was in our minds since 2019, and we started looking at that area because what is going on in Medellín is very important in terms of tourism and culture,” said Sanchez, who graduated from Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., with a masters degree last year before assuming his role at CLK Group. “We started comparing Medellín to what was in Bogotá before Movistar Arena, and we realized that the market for concerts was changing and more developed. Medellín is in a better position to accept a building than Bogotá was before.”

The 592,000-square-foot arena boasts an LED façade and plenty of premium seating with luxury suites near the ground level similar to Movistar Arena, open boxes, club-level seating and spaces for people with limited mobility. The naming rights to the venue are still up for grabs, but Sanchez said plenty of suitors are vying to have the title of their company on the new arena and that CLK Group could potentially sign a deal sometime in 2025.

Arena Primavera is part of a larger 14-acre project in Sabaneta, a municipality located in the Metropolitan Aburrá Valley, to stimulate the local economy that will feature a lot more than just live entertainment.

With support from local government, CLK Group hopes to make the area a cultural hub with restaurants and homes surrounding the venue.

The roads around Arena Primavera are to be built to make the area more accessible to patrons, especially for those visiting from nearby cities such as Medellín, Itagüí and Envigado.

Sanchez said that CLK Group approached city officials about the arena, and it eventually evolved into a renewable energy urban plan that included an abundance of green space — using Movistar Arena as a template.

“The impact Movistar Arena has in its surrounding community is amazing,” he said. “If you go any time to that park, there’s going to be people jogging, skateboarding, playing soccer. That’s something we want to do.”

Another aspect of Movistar Arena that Sanchez admires is how good that venue is at “creating spaces that brands can use,” and he hopes to leverage similar brands and activations to develop unique experiences for customers.

Another feature that distinguishes Arena Primavera from CLK Group’s Bogotá building is not only in its size — it is more than 215,000 square feet larger — but how it plans to build a bridge between its community and music outside of live events. CLK Group wants to partner with local educational institutions to create music programs and allow aspiring musicians to ,use a recording studio incorporated into the arena.

“We want the arena to have a social use. That’s embedded in our mission as a building,” Sanchez said. “We’re going to be bringing life to the surrounding areas.”

CLK Group’s goal is to earn LEED Silver for the arena, tied to efficient use of electricity and using power from companies that generate renewable energy.

They plan to collect rainwater that can be recycled and used for the toilets and cleaning.

“Our shows will be powered by the grid, so we’re not going to use any diesel or gas plants,” Sanchez said, also mentioning renewable energy.

“We’re going to use the grid, and the energy from the grid is cleaner than diesel.”

Sanchez anticipates hosting up to 75 shows in the first year of operation with about 1,000 employees. Though Latin music reigns supreme in the South American nation, he said Medellín is the “capital of electronic music” for Colombia.

That’s a big reason why CLK Group wants a larger floor capacity at concerts, akin to large warehouse and club venues known for raves and electronic music.

It’s a major boost for the Antioquia province and the area’s capital, Medellín, which doesn’t have a modern arena. Such a building is a testament to the perseverance of a country that for decades was associated with drugs and violence. Art has helped the area get rid of preconceived stereotypes with the ascension of Colombian music stars like Karol G, Maluma, Juanes and J Balvin. Sanchez noted that tourism has gone up and that many of those who purchase tickets are from other countries. The municipal government is doing its part to keep that momentum going.

“The municipal government of Sabaneta has done a great job,” he added. “Medellín is a very large city, but it’s the Metropolitan area of the [Valle de Aburrá], which is composed of different municipalities that are under a political structure. The former mayor of Sabaneta and the one running for office right now have done a great job and envisioned this so well. They opened doors for us and helped us a lot with the legal stuff. They want to transform Sabaneta into a cultural district.”