Denver’s hottest music venue is… under the highway?
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DENVER — Outdoor concerts are a staple of Colorado summers, but Red Rocks isn’t exactly the type of place the headbangers among us can open up a mosh pit, what with all the stairs and, well, rocks.
But a highway underpass? Perfect.
On September 30, Baltimore-based hardcore band Turnstile will christen Project 70, a new outdoor (and flat) venue under the highway between the National Western Complex and the Denver Coliseum. Denver Arts & Venues, the government agency, will manage the space. But Project 70 was the brainchild of AEG Presents, the live entertainment company founded by Colorado billionaire Philip Anschutz.
“AEG is doing some unique placemaking and creating an experience rather than what the agency considers a new venue,” said Brian Kitts, Denver Arts & Venues director of marketing and communications, in an email.
Evan Marks, a talent buyer at AEG, said Project 70 will give surging bands like Turnstile — which Pitchfork called “the biggest hardcore band in the world” — more flexibility when it comes to performing in Colorado.
“Turnstile needs a fully GA (general admission) flat-ground area where people can go crazy, and that's not Red Rocks,” Marks said. “People will get hurt if there's a mosh at Red Rocks.”
Pierre Booth knows a lot about moshing. Founder of the punk band Dry Ice, Booth has been performing in Denver since 2017. Their favorite venue in the city is Hi-Dive on South Broadway.
“Part of that is because it's independently owned still,” Booth said. “AEG and Live Nation venues are a little bit tougher because they often don't reach out to local artists to have them support. And if they do, it's kind of a high barrier to entry.”
The Turnstile concert at Project 70 will have three openers. None of them are from Denver.
“Unfortunately we are not adding any local acts,” Marks said in an email.
“In touring and talking with people, all the cities are going the same way,” Booth said. “All of the venues … are being owned by, like, the same one or two companies and it’s really hard for local artists to make their way up.”
Marks said AEG was heavily influenced by Under the K-Bridge, a venue in Brooklyn, New York under the Kosciuszko Bridge. Once dubbed the “most hated” bridge in the city by The New York Times, the outdoor venue — where Turnstile held its album release concert earlier this year — is now considered one of the city’s “most unique and hippest venues.”
“We're sort of trying to deliver our own experience like that in Denver,” Marks said.
For AEG, Project 70’s draw is not just its capacity — about 10,000, Marks said, making it slightly larger than Red Rocks — but also its location.
“The decibel limits and the curfew are a couple things that are kind of fun for a site like this,” Marks said. “Because it's in sort of an unused and somewhat forgotten area, we have a bit of flexibility on the curfew and the decibel limits, whereas we have really strict rules in a place like Red Rocks that's out there surrounded by the Morrison community.”
In other words, Project 70 will be loud. And Marks is booking shows with that in mind. “You're not going to see James Taylor or Amos Lee play under the bridge at Project 70,” he said.
According to AEG, Project 70 will have standard concert accommodations like bathrooms and a bar, but Marks does not have specifics yet on where exactly the stage or parking will be.
“These [concerts] are completely, 100% underneath the I-70 overpass,” Marks offered.
Marks said Project 70 will be louder than Red Rocks, which last updated its noise limits in 2017 due to complaints about show volumes. After those changes, noise complaints were mostly limited to concerns about loud vehicles, then-Morrison Police Chief Bill Vinelli told The Denver Post last year (Vinelli was later placed on administrative leave for “policy violations” which included taking pay from the City of Denver to patrol Red Rocks while also being paid by Morrison).
Outdoor music venues are not strangers to controversy. In Colorado Springs, Ford Amphitheater is working with the city to reduce its noise. The AEG-operated venue opened last August and nearby residents filed more than 600 noise complaints in the venue’s first two weeks.
Rocky Mountain PBS visited the Project 70 site on a Tuesday afternoon in late July. The traffic overhead was loud, and pigeons outnumbered parked cars 10-to-1, but the noise wasn’t anything that couldn’t be drowned out by Turnstile’s “Birds.”
The residents of the two neighborhoods nearest Project 70 — Globeville and Elyria-Swansea (GES) — are used to noise. The neighborhoods straddle the intersection of I-70 and I-25 and are surrounded by industrial facilities.
As part of a 2018 settlement with GES residents who sued, unsuccessfully, to prevent the expansion of I-70, the state promised to conduct a community health study to address noise, odor and pollution in the area, one of the most polluted zip codes in the country.
Researchers published their first findings in February of 2024. The health study found that GES residents experience more noise pollution than other Denver residents, and that “loud noises, particularly generated by industry and trains, can impact the mental well-being of residents, including increasing anxiety and stress.”
“Community members have indicated an interest in having noise barriers installed throughout GES,” the study read. “However, CDOT only builds noise barriers required by Federal [regulations].”
Kitts with Denver Arts & Venues told Rocky Mountain PBS that no infrastructure is planned to reduce the noise from the concerts.
Rocky Mountain PBS reached out to the GES Coalition, a grassroots group of GES residents with a “commitment to economic, racial, and environmental justice.” The group recently secured a commitment from Denver Mayor Mike Johnston for more “community ownership” of land in the neighborhood.
A spokesperson for the GES Coalition told Rocky Mountain PBS that the group had not heard of Project 70. But they also weren’t outwardly opposed to it.
Kitts played down Project 70’s novelty. Concerts in the area aren’t necessarily new. “This time the promoter is actually branding its temporary improvement of the space,” he said.
Marks acknowledged that AEG has organized concerts in the Denver Coliseum parking lot.
“Those were out in the open giant parking lot and as regular as any old parking lot show,” he said in an email. “These shows will not be like those. These are completely, 100% underneath the I-70 overpass and it will feel much different for the crowd and performers.”
Type of story: News
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources.
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources.
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