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It might not have a name yet, but the realization of the much-ballyhooed mid-sized music venue by Portland’s Monqui Presents and AEG Presents is well underway at the corner of Northeast 9th and Multnomah.
Demolition at the site of the former Nordstrom inside the 1.472 million square foot footprint of Lloyd Center Mall has been ongoing since June. The construction denotes an unofficial race to complete a midsized music venue ahead of beleaguered concert promoter Live Nation and their ticketing platform Ticketmaster.
The Lloyd Center site boasts a huge amount of practical pluses for the project’s promoters, as well as for the eventual throngs of music heads beckoned to the venue’s doors when it opens in early 2027. As Monqui’s Mike Quinn explains, the site’s coveted CX zoning designation—intended to provide for commercial and mixed use development within Portland’s most urban areas—negates the need for special use permitting or zoning changes, allowing for established area infrastructure to boost the appeal of the site when it opens.
Related: Read our previous coverage of the new Monqui/AEG venue.
“The parking structure to the north of us is gonna stay up and that’s 1,200-1,500 spots,” reports Quinn. “There’s tons of surface parking at night there. You’ve got MAX there. You’ve got room for rideshare. You’ve got bike paths. You’ve got the bus. We’re right off I-5 [and I-84]. It’s a great area for all of that.”
Upon completion, the as-yet-unnamed venue will span 68,000 square feet, utilizing the old Nordstrom basement, which Quinn says will be used for catering, dressing rooms, storage, and production offices. The interior will provide flexible seating for 2,000 to 4,250 attendees, with a general admission floor for 2,000, as well as a mezzanine and modular stadium seating in the back of the venue to allow for the remaining capacity goals.
Released artist renderings of the venue have thus far only shown exterior drawings; the details of interior plans are still ongoing between the project’s design firm—Works Progress Architecture—and the Monqui/AEG teams. Those familiar with WPA’s Denver, Colorado Mission Ballroom venue will have a good idea of what the final product may resemble, albeit with functional and aesthetic tweaks.
“The Mission was the first of [its kind] that was built, so there’s a lot of improvement that the Portland venue will see based on years of operation at the Mission,” says Quinn. “What’s good, what’s bad, what works, what doesn’t, what could be better. That will all be factored into Portland.”
Discussions around interior details like materials and finishes are advancing and largely budget-driven, though Quinn says most of the color templates and palates are figured out. The eventual name of the venue, Quinn says, is bound to inform those details once it’s decided on.
What Portland needs in a midsized music venue—essentially the sweet spot between theater-sized venues in the 900-1,300 capacity range and the much larger arena-sized shows like those at Moda Center (a Live Nation venue)—has been a goal of Quinn’s for nearly a decade. Working with the AEG offices in Denver and Seattle—owned by Colorado billionaire Phil Anschutz—has proven to be a synergistic partnership, one that Quinn feels confident will yield a top-tier destination for artists and productions of all kinds to Portland’s Eastside.
The rival Live Nation venue project scored a victory in June after Oregon’s Land Use Board of Appeals greenlit the development of a parcel of land along Water Avenue in Portland’s Southeast Industrial area, despite vocal concerns around public safety and benefit to the area. That project’s $50 million scope will boast a 62,000 square foot venue, developed by local firms Beam Construction & Management and Colas Development Group. The concert promoter is still mired in the throes of a lawsuit brought on by the U.S. Department of Justice and 39 states, including Oregon, for alleged anti-competitive practices.
Calls to halt the progress of the project were spurred on by locals Double Tee Concerts, MusicPortland, and others, drawing a virtual line in the sand between more homegrown Portland promoters and the monopolistic bent of Live Nation. The site on Water Avenue required developers to seek a conditional use permit from the City. Conditional use permits are required for projects on land that may have adverse impacts on the surrounding area including desired character or appearance, public infrastructure, transportation networks.
Despite the perceived rivalry between the Monqui/AEG venue and Live Nation’s venue, Quinn’s optimism around the site of his eventual business venture supersedes the noise. “I wish there was just one [midsized venue being built],” says Quinn. “There’s not much we can do about it; we just think we’re gonna have [the] better venue. I hate to keep comparing, but on Water Avenue, you’ve got the train—we don’t have the train [up at Lloyd].”
Union Pacific freight trains rumbling through the Southeast Industrial neighborhood can often approach a near-immobile state, halting foot, bike, and car traffic for upwards of an hour. “Seventy minutes is my record,” says Quinn. “You see people walking over the train sometimes.”
This same Southeast Industrial area is where Quinn and Monqui’s other music venue construction is ongoing, albeit east of the train tracks. Doug Fir’s location on Southeast Morrison Street in the former Le Bistro Montage space has been facing continual permitting issues with the City and the Portland Bureau of Transportation, along with challenging fees. Quinn says that despite the continued frustrations that have arisen from the delays at Doug Fir, the issuing of building permits in June has driven the project forward.
“We got our structural steel order, so once that gets in place and is installed, we can apply a proper timeline for reopening, because it’s been kind of nebulous,” says Quinn. “But once the steel goes in, that predicates a lot of the finishes and the work after that we can do. It’s been an arduous journey.”
Related: Read our most recent update on the reopening of Doug Fir.
As for the new Lloyd Center venture, it’s too early to start booking artists or placing holds on dates, especially for the venue’s inaugural show, though Quinn says there has been plenty of interest. “We’ve had bands and managers approach us, and I know we’re interested in some local [and] regional Portland stuff,” says Quinn. “We’re looking to open first quarter ‘27, or April or May ‘27. That’s still a long way out for a lot of touring bands.”
In the meantime, you’ll mostly see a lot of construction in that zone of the Lloyd Center. The eyesore promises to be a boon to the area once completed.
“We’re just psyched that we found this good location,” says Quinn. “We’ve done the rounds with the various neighborhood associations and business groups, and everybody is super psyched.”
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Ryan J. Prado
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