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It’s Not Easy to Open a New Venue, But That’s Not Stopping These Music Lovers
Mumford & Sons’ Ben Lovett has opened Pacific Electric, a 750-capacity music venue in downtown Los Angeles, despite the financial and regulatory difficulties facing new live-music spaces. He hopes the venue will help strengthen an area near Chinatown and the Los Angeles River that is still recovering from the pandemic, while recognising that cultural development can also reshape or displace communities.
Lovett’s company, TVG Hospitality, has spent a decade developing venues across the United States, and he argues that such spaces can anchor neighbourhood life and attract related businesses. The article places Pacific Electric within a tougher national context: smaller venues are closing, living costs are rising and live-event income is concentrated among stadium-level acts. It also cites Another Planet Entertainment’s $41 million restoration of San Francisco’s Castro Theatre, illustrating the scale and risk involved in preserving mid-sized venues.
In short
- Ben Lovett opened a 750-capacity Los Angeles venue despite industry pressures.
- New venues may boost neighbourhood culture but can reshape communities.
- Restoration and promotion remain financially risky ventures.
Steelman: both sides, in good faith
The strongest fair case each way — we don't pick a winner.
The case for
New music venues are vital cultural infrastructure that recovering neighbourhoods urgently need. Mid-sized live venues are closing nationwide due to rising costs and regulatory burdens, eroding the cultural landscape and harming both artists and audiences. Anchoring underutilised urban areas with vibrant cultural spaces like Pacific Electric can catalyse broader neighbourhood revitalisation, attract complementary businesses, and create employment for communities still struggling after the pandemic.
The case against
Whilst cultural development sounds positive, such projects frequently catalyse gentrification in vulnerable neighbourhoods. New upscale venues and the affluent patrons they attract drive property values and rents higher, displacing existing residents and established businesses that sustained the area through harder times. Rather than celebrating development by wealthy outsiders, ensuring existing residents share equitably in neighbourhood improvement—or questioning whether such development truly serves those currently living there—should be the priority.
Explained simply
Music venues across the United States are struggling. Small to medium-sized independent venues are closing due to rising costs, pandemic aftereffects, and the concentration of live-event income among major stadium acts.
Ben Lovett, the keyboardist and co-founder of Mumford & Sons, has opened Pacific Electric, a 750-capacity venue in downtown Los Angeles near Chinatown and the Los Angeles River. His hospitality company TVG Hospitality has spent a decade developing music venues across the United States based on the belief that such venues can strengthen neighbourhoods.
Lovett's venture is notable because it demonstrates investment in a difficult sector where closures are common; other operators like Another Planet Entertainment have invested tens of millions in restoring mid-sized venues. However, such cultural development can also reshape or displace existing communities.