Wheeling Creates Entertainment Endowment Fund To Attract Bigger-Name Acts to City
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WHEELING -- Wheeling city officials want to bring bigger names in entertainment back to the stages of the Friendly City and are looking to provide a financial incentive to do it.
This week, Wheeling City Council approved a resolution creating an entertainment endowment fund and an ad-hoc committee to assist in expediting and attracting various entertainment acts to the city's performing arts venues.
"The entertainment endowment fund is a partnership with the Convention and Visitors Bureau, the Greater Wheeling Sports & Entertainment Authority and the city of Wheeling," Vice Mayor Chad Thalman said. "This endowment fund will allow us to book more shows and events at the Capitol Theatre and WesBanco Arena. We're excited about this partnership and look forward to being able to provide residents with more entertainment options."
This summer during his State of the City address, Wheeling Mayor Glenn Elliott gave hints about this plan to attract more marquee acts to the city for residents of the greater Ohio Valley to enjoy.
"This is something that we've talked about for a while," Elliott said, noting that he grew up in Wheeling and recalls first-hand the previous decades when big-name national acts made stops in the city to perform at venues like the Capitol Theatre and WesBanco Arena -- formerly the Capitol Music Hall and the Wheeling Civic Center. "They used to get certain shows of a higher caliber -- bigger-name acts back in the day. It's been harder and harder to get those same shows these days."
Elliott indicated that the way the music business and the concert industry works has changed over the years, and host venues and host cities have to change with the times.
"What promoters are looking for is to come into cities and locations where some of the risk of putting on a show is absorbed, but not by them," Elliott said. "One of the reasons why I think promoters have turned away from Wheeling is that we've asked them to take a lot of that risk."
The idea behind the entertainment endowment fund and the ad-hoc committee, according to the mayor, is to establish a group of people who are tuned into the music scene, the comedy scene and all of the other kinds of national acts who will help determine which shows might work well in the Wheeling market. The committee will provide recommendations to the Greater Wheeling Sports and Entertainment Board, and collaboratively, the group will determine whether or not to move forward with certain shows. If a show booking is pursued, funding could be made available to offset some of the up-front risk, the mayor said.
"The idea being that the fund is fully restored at the show or actually even makes money, but we're not asking the promoters of these shows to take on 100% of the risk upfront," Elliott said. "That's the idea, with the thinking being that this will really help us expand the type of shows we get, because any night that the arena or theater sits dark is a wasted opportunity to bring business and people into the city of Wheeling. Both of those facilities look wonderful. There has been a lot of public and private money that has gone into them, and we need to take advantage of that."
Officials indicated the city's partnership with the Convention and Visitors Bureau should draw matching money to help collaboratively bolster the entertainment endowment fund.
"I look forward to putting together a committee that's really able to take advantage of this opportunity and bring some greater talent here," Elliott said. "We need to get those buildings lit up with entertainment and live shows again, because I think that's what people expect. And given the public investment in these properties, I think it's a good return on investment."