Raleigh council’s vote keeps Red Hat Amphitheater downtown

RALEIGH, N.C. (WNCN) — Raleigh City Council voted Tuesday to close a portion of South Street to allow the relocation of Red Hat Amphitheater. That decision will have a lasting impact on the city as whole.

A sea of red filled council chambers with people wearing red hats and t-shirts reading ‘Save Our Amp’. The erupted in cheers as council voted to close the one block section of South Street.

David Brower is CEO of PineCone, one of the organizations that helped put on the bluegrass festival at Red Hat Amphitheater for years. The festival brings in thousand of people and revenue dollars to the city every year.

“Supporting the move and expansion of the Red Hat Amphitheater is a vote for joy” Brower said. “Downtown needs to be something more than a bunch of cubicles people go to two or three times a week. We’ve got a plan. We got an audience, now we need your support.”

Businesses and downtown workers urged council to approve the closure, saying they rely on the success. The move is happening to usher the expansion of the Raleigh Convention Center. The convention center would take over the amphitheater’s current place which has been the plan for years.

Moving the venue one block south would keep the venue downtown, at its current size, and within the $40 million allotted budget. The city has been forced to speed through this process to meet the commitments and timelines required by the state to ensure funding for the convention center expansion.

The move comes at a time when the city and the Downtown Raleigh Alliance are spending a lot of money to bring back foot traffic and businesses downtown. Council opted close South Street not only to keep the Red Hat Amphitheatre but also to ensure their work to reignite downtown doesn’t go to waste.

“We need more drivers of traffic downtown so losing one would have been really harmful and devastating,” said Bill King, president and CEO of the DRA. “Keeping this downtown is good momentum. Now we get a better venue.”

Some nearby homeowners continue to be concerned about their restricted access to downtown, increased traffic and lack of public input.

“The current Red Hat plans appear to have been made by a group whose only concern was improving the Red Hat Amphitheater and, from all outward appearances, intentionally avoided input from the surrounding residential communities,” Joseph Huberman, who lives downtown, told city council members during Tuesday’s meeting.

The city is now planning for the construction of a new road to help navigate drivers around the closure. While the cost is estimated to be between $2 million and $3 million, the city has no concrete plans for how to fund that work.

Staff say recent studies shows downtown roads can handle the traffic from that closure even with future downtown development.

Groundbreaking for the new space and the South Street closure is expected early 2025. The venue is expected to re-open in its new location in time for the 2026 season.

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