Digital rendering of the Westville Music Bowl.
Here’s a harbinger of both warmer weather and a post-pandemic future: An outdoor-music venue is set to launch in Westville beginning with an April 30 show by the jam band Gov’t Mule.
The venue is called the Westville Music Bowl. It will occupy the former tennis stadium next to the Yale Bowl.
Final renovations are being completed, with concerts to begin in the spring.
“Westville Music Bowl stands as the light at the end of the tunnel for large scale events to make their return,” the venue states in a release issued Monday morning.
The first two scheduled shows will be headlined by Gov’t Mule on the evenings of April 30 and May 1. (Pre-sale starts Wednesday at 10 a.m. here; general on-sale starts Friday at 10 a.m.
The new outdoor venue will be run by the nonprofit NHCPA Outdoors LLC, a subsidiary of the New Haven Center for Performing Arts (NHCPA) Inc. which in turn owns the College Street Music Hall downtown. The team behind the venue staged socially distanced outdoor concerts last summer at the South Farms’ “Twilight Concerts on the Farm” series in Litchfield County.
For this first season, the Westville Music Bowl will operate at a far reduced capacity — 2,000 — to comply with Covid-19 restrictions. Bigger concerts will be on tap for the following summer, when the capacity for some concerts could reach as high as 12,000.
The Bowl plans to host acts in a range of musical genres from Americana and indie and classic rock to hip hop, country, neo-soul, R&B, and comedy.
“Think College Street Music Hall, but larger and outside and under the stars,” the release states.
For this season’s concerts at the Westville Music Bowl, people can buy blocks of two or four tickets. They’ll be seated separated six feet apart from other pairs or quartets of ticket-holders.
“All guests & staff will undergo a Health Check, including a temperature check and short questionnaire prior to entering the venue. Staff are required to wear masks at all times, while security will be on site to enforce social distancing etiquette,” the release states. It boasts that concerts will feature “local food including offerings for vegans and those with dietary restrictions, as well as a full bar with beer (local/craft, domestic and import), wine, cocktails and soft drinks available.”
The stadium itself was built decades ago in time to host the August 1991 Volvo International Tennis Tournament. In 2019 the Tennis Foundation of Connecticut (TFC), which leased the land on which the stadium was built and nearby parking from Yale University, announced that it would no longer host the Connecticut Open there.
From the start, part of the plan was to hold outdoor concerts at the tennis stadium. But when the tennis tournament took place, only a few weeks were available. Some memorable concerts did take place there in the ‘90s, though.
Decades before that, some Westvillians rose up in opposition to the occasional concert or planned concert (by Paul McCartney, for instance) at the Yale Bowl itself. The fear was the neighborhood would be overrun and driveways blocked by cars parked on lawns and side streets. But that’s because Yale Bowl concerts could draw 50,000 or more people.
Brian Slattery Pre-Pandemic Photo
Concert promoters Keith Mahler and Mark Nussbaum.
Some neighbors did raise parking concerns again when the city considered and then approved the Westville Music Bowl plan in 2019. However this time neighbors for the most part rallied around the plan for bringing fun and vitality to Westville, with the ability to walk to outdoor concerts by nationally touring acts. Read all about that, and the details of the plan, in this previous article.
One neighbor, Kate Bradley, did bring up parking again when news about the imminent opening of the Music Bowl came up at the most recent Westville/ West Hills Community Management team meeting, held online last week. Bradley asked Westville top cop Elliot Rosa how seriously the New Haven Police Department would enforce parking restrictions. Lt. Rosa answered that parking should not be a problem during concerts this year, when no more than 2,000 people will be allowed in the concert venue at one time. The Yale Bowl parking lots would more than cover any overflow, he said.
The stadium was built to accommodate 15,000 fans, so the existing parking far exceeds the capacity planned for this summer.
Westville Alder Adam Marchand stepped in to say that he and Upper Westville Alder Darryl J. Brackeen, Jr. have worked hard to ease neighbors’ parking problems during events at Yale fields. He plans to review the Westville Music Bowl parking plans carefully, too, he said.
“We are super excited about the Westville Music Bowl. It’s an amazing synergy with the growth we are seeing in Westville Village in restaurants and new visitors,” Lizzy Donius, executive director of the Westville Village Renaissance Association, told the Independent.
The Music Bowl’s attorney, Steven Mednick, represented the neighborhood as an alder during debates over concerts in the 1980s. He recalled attending concerts at the tennis stadium in the 1990s.
“When we were sitting in the tennis center, I had said that this would be the best outdoor music venue in the state of Connecticut,” Mednick said. He may now see that prediction come true.