NEW FANS EMBRACE NEW DAILY’S PLACE

Daily’s Place, Jacksonville, Fla., was built to fill a hole in the concert space in the Northeastern Florida market. Attached to Jacksonville Jaguars’ Everbank Field, the new 5,500-capacity amphitheater and flex-field opened May 27.
“We didn’t build Daily’s Place to reach the same people who come to Jaguars games,” said Chad Johnson SVP, sales and service, Bold Events and The Jacksonville Jaguars.  “As we’ve gone through our first round of studies, we’ve found that 75 percent of the people purchasing tickets for Daily’ Place have never been to a Jaguars game.”
“The goal is to be a first-class facility for the fans and the artists,” said Johnson.
The conversations regarding the project started three years ago when Shad Khan bought the Jaguars, said Johnson. “We were looking at new and creative things we could do to drive the business forward to help overcome some of the inherent challenges that come with a small market like we have here.”
Johnson and his team started by “looking at areas where we currently aren’t delivering in the marketplace” and noticed there was gap in the 5,000-6,000-seat event space. The amphitheater idea came from those conversations.
The project is a part of a private-public partnership between Khan and the city of Jacksonville. Ninety million dollars was budgeted for Daily’s Place along with improvements to EverBank Field, split 50-50 between the two entities. The naming rights deal with Daily’s Place is for five years and there is an option to extend.
Ground broke on Daily’s Place and the flex-field in August 2016. The entire flex-field and amphitheater are under a shared-roof structure. The flex-field will be used for Jaguars practices, pregame hospitality events for Jaguars games, trade shows and community events that would require a covered space.
“The stage of the amphitheater backs up to the flex-field and those airline-hangar doors will open up,” said Johnson. Combined the venues are 160,000 sq.-ft., 94,000 sq.-ft. for the flex-field and 66,000 for the amphitheater.
Populous is the designer of the new venues. The design process took about two months, said Jonathan Mallie, principal and director of the New York office, Populous. “It was an extremely aggressive construction schedule,” said Mallie.
“The predominate architectural move of the roof-scape that that hovers over the venues really creates an iconic presence on the waterfront,” said Mallie.
Co-facility management partner Live Nation is the content provider and SMG will be the co-facility partner with Live Nation on the operational side. There are 28 confirmed shows “When we are fully operational we expect to have 40 events a year,” said Johnson.