While Salt Lake City and Sandy are both vying to feature a Broadway-styled theatre that boasts of 2500 seats capacity, critics are wondering if this is really necessary at all.
Salt Lake City claims that they are in need of a bigger venue for Broadway productions but the fact remains that they already have two venues that are more than enough to accommodate Broadway fans. The Capitol Theatre and Kingsbury Hall each boast their own unique selling points and to date, every major touring musical productions were presented in these two venues.
People have enjoyed “The Phantom of the Opera,” “Les Miserables,” “Hairspray” and “Mama Mia” at Salt Lake City, and next season “Wicked” will play for five weeks at the Capitol Theatre.
The problem with building these large capacity structures is that other venues already built must be compromised. For sure, a new 2,500-seat venue in Sandy won’t generate better tourism and hotel business for the county but it will simply direct away business that is currently occurring in downtown Salt Lake City.
