The Grand Rapids Amphitheater and the dictatorship of capital

We now have two days behind us and by all commercial media accounts the opening of the amphitheater was a success. People bought tickets, some paid $60 for parking, and lots of businesses in downtown Grand Rapids were packed with consumers having dinner and drinks.

However, let us not lose sight about what the amphitheater project is and has always been about – expanding the wealth of those who proposed the amphitheater in the first place, the members of Grand Action 2.0.

Look at who was invited to be part of the ribbon cutting ceremony pictured here above. These people are part of the Grand Rapids Power Structure, which included two politicians – Mayor LaGrand and Kent County Chair Ben Greene, both claiming to represent the people, when in fact they do the bidding of those with the real power.

We all became aware of the proposed amphitheater in 2020, when the community was in the midst of a pandemic.

The DeVos family purchased the Charlie’s Crab property in order to make room for the amphitheater, which led to the City of Grand Rapids moving some of it’s services to a different location in order to clear out even more riverfront space for the Grand Action 2.0 proposed project. It is always instructive to see how much effort and public dollars are used for such projects while thousands of families in Grand Rapids have no secure housing.

In 2022, we learned that the Convention and Arena Authority would manage the amphitheater and according to City documents, the “Design and financial planning for the amphitheater continues through a partnership of Grand Action 2.0, the DDA/DGRI, the City, the CAA and other stakeholders.”

We have been told from the beginning that this was a private/public partnership, where the public (without it’s consent) provides millions, while the private sector reaps most of the benefits.

We have a local commercial media sector that has continued to endorse the amphitheater project, with gushing headlines using a news platform to celebrate the dictatorship of capitalism in this city.

In December of 2024, I wrote that the Kent County Commission voted for a 25 year contract with Live Nation for events at the Amphitheater, even though Live Nation is facing a federal lawsuit for having a near monopoly on tickets sales and for jacking up the price for concert goers.

Last September we found out how much public money has been used for the amphitheater project and we learned what the ticket pricing structure would be for amphitheater events.

In March of this year it was revealed that the GRPD is using the amphitheater as another justification for their own bloated budget, since the the Amphitheater and will be paying for at least 24 GRPD cops to work the Amphitheater events, to make sure that tourists and people with money will be protected from unhoused people or political dissidents who might interrupt their plans to have dinner & drinks before attending live concerts with overpriced tickets.