City officials, arts leaders and north Minneapolis community members ceremonially broke ground on a multi-million dollar amphitheater Monday. The Community Performing Arts Center amphitheater is a 8,000 capacity concert venue set to open in summer of 2027.
“We’re going to have extraordinary music playing,” said Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey as he envisioned what opening day would look like. “The river will be right here, the downtown will be the backdrop. The sun will be setting, and we’ll all recognize the kind of work and the partnership that went into making this beautiful vision happen.”
The amphitheater will be operated by the Port of Minneapolis, a collaboration between music venue First Avenue and the Minnesota Orchestra.
“We’re so excited to put these shovels in the ground and build the next great Minneapolis treasured destination, and an economic engine for the northside,” said First Avenue president and CEO Dayna Frank.
Part of each ticket sold at the amphitheater will be reinvested into the community, through a partnership with the African American Community Development Corporation, also known as AACDC
“Today is more than about a project on the riverfront. It is about community. The community that has insisted on its own future, and shaping that future,” said AACDC chair Keith Baker.
The amphitheater is part of the larger Upper Harbor Terminal redevelopment project — a 48 acre city-owned site that will eventually include mixed-income housing, commercial business spaces and nature spaces along the Mississippi waterfront.
“There was this notion that maybe the northside doesn’t deserve great things,” said Frey. “But I think the people on the northside know, and now everybody throughout our city knows … the northside deserves great things.”
