A temporary amphitheater is opening as a yearslong test run for a hoped-for Hollywood Bowl-style venue<\/p>\n
A waterfront amphitheater roughly twice the size of the Greek Theatre and two-thirds the size of the Hollywood Bowl is set to open this week in Long Beach \u2014 and there\u2019s a lot riding on its success.<\/p>\n
City leaders hope F&M Bank Amphitheater of Long Beach, located next to the famed Queen Mary, will supplant declining revenues from oil extraction and lead to an uptick in tourism. Concert promoters, meanwhile, see it as filling an important gap in Southern California\u2019s music venue market.<\/p>\n
The temporary amphitheater, which has a maximum capacity of 11,000, is meant to be a precursor to a permanent \u201cLong Beach Bowl,\u201d which is being pitched as the largest waterfront venue on the West Coast. The site opens Saturday with a performance by native son Snoop Dogg, and is expected to last for up to 10 years.<\/p>\n
The new amphitheater represents a years-long dream of Mayor Rex Richardson, who began championing an outdoor performance venue on the waterfront in 2023. Soon after the closure of Irvine\u2019s FivePoint Amphitheatre in October of that year, he accelerated those plans by proposing this facility. The general feeling was that Irvine\u2019s loss could be Long Beach\u2019s gain.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis will be a place where memories are made, where music brings people together and where our city shows up on the big stage,\u201d he said during a January groundbreaking. \u201cThe amphitheater represents direction to invest in our city\u2019s future, to embrace our creative economy [and] to shape how people experience Long Beach for generations to come.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A temporary amphitheater is opening as a yearslong test run for a hoped-for Hollywood Bowl-style venue A waterfront…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":133392,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[68254,68251,68258,68249,68248,68257,131,133,132,30425,68252,68245,68250,68244,68256,68246,68255,68253,68247],"class_list":["post-347124","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-long-beach","tag-android-magazine","tag-best-magazine","tag-digital-magazines","tag-free-magazine","tag-free-magazines","tag-ipad-magazine","tag-long-beach","tag-long-beach-headlines","tag-long-beach-news","tag-magazine","tag-magazine-subscription","tag-magazines","tag-magazines-for-smartphones","tag-magzter","tag-online-digital-magazine","tag-online-magazine","tag-online-pdf-magazine","tag-pdf-for-smartphones","tag-pdf-magazine"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/347124","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=347124"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/347124\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/133392"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=347124"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=347124"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=347124"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}