Columbus Monthly / October 2010 / Germain Amphitheater: You can't always get what you want

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Germain Amphitheater: You can't always get what you want

Tracy Tucker spent 13 glorious years working at Germain Amphitheater. “If you asked me when I was 20 what my dream job was, I would have described that one,” says the former executive director of the Delaware County concert venue.

So that’s why a visit to the abandoned outdoor theater about a year ago was so painful. Closed since September 2007, the property was a mess: smashed windows, burned and vandalized buildings, waist-high weeds. She says someone even had tried to set fire to the stage. “It made me kind of sad, honestly,” says Tucker, who was asked by Live Nation, the amphitheater’s owner, to check out the property.

The outcome is a surprising twist for the once popular concert venue, which has morphed from Central Ohio’s favorite place to see an outdoor show in the mid 1990s into a real estate cautionary tale during the Great Recession. “It’s horrible,” says former co-owner Scott Stienecker. “It’s just sitting there.”

Sixteen years ago, Stienecker and two other promoters, Jules Belkin and Dave Lucas, opened what was then called Polaris Amphitheater on 83 acres in southern Delaware County. The trio later sold their interests and, by 2007, Live Nation, the powerful entertainment conglomerate, put the property up for sale.

It seemed like a smart move. Though Tucker says Germain was still profitable, a changing concert industry and competition from Nationwide Arena and the Schottenstein Center had cut into the bottom line. Plus, it seemed simple to sell a prime chunk of land in one of the region’s hottest commercial districts.

The speculation was that Live Nation had a deal in place even before they closed the facility. Business First reported in May 2007 that Glimcher Realty Trust, owner of the nearby Polaris Fashion Place, was ready to snap up the land. That deal, however, never materialized. (A Glimcher spokeswoman says the company has never had a contract on the property.)

Then, earlier this year, the spot emerged as a possible location for the proposed casino during the downtown gambling wars before protests from Delaware County commissioners killed the idea. (Live Nation officials didn’t return messages seeking comment for this story.)

Developer Skip Weiler, president of the Robert Weiler Company, says he was ready to buy the land about a year ago, but dropped out after a proposed tenant got cold feet. He remains interested, but says the asking price—about $11 million—is too high in the current economic climate. “In today’s market, you just sit and hold until the market comes back,” he says. “We’d rather let them hold it and buy it when we’re ready to use it.”

Weiler says Live Nation officials could have sold the property three years ago if they were more flexible. “They were holding out for the last dollar and ended up getting caught in this economy,” he says.