A Colorado company is teaming with the city of McKinney to bring a $220 million open-air amphitheater to Collin County that could seat up to 20,000 spectators.
Set on more than 46 acres northeast of U.S. 75 and State Highway 121, the development dubbed the Sunset Amphitheater will have over 250 luxury fire pit suites, custom-built suites, reserved seating in its mid- and lower bowl and a landscaped grass berm.
“We are a company that believes music is a unifier,” said Notes Live Inc. founder J.W. Roth, who expects the venue to host 50 to 55 shows a year. “If you ask a big room to raise your hand if you hate baseball, there are going to be some hands raised. But if you say raise your hand if you hate music, you’ll not find a single hand goes up.”
The project is modeled after Notes Live’s soon-to-be-opened Colorado Springs venue. Roth describes the McKinney version as the Colorado Springs version “on steroids” due to its 20,000-person capacity to the base model’s 8,000-person capacity. The concept in Colorado Springs takes a campus-like approach to development and has incorporated elevated food and beverage offerings with its Bourbon Brothers restaurant and Notes Live music and social bar.
It’s also working on a 12,500-capacity venue in Broken Arrow near Tulsa, which Live Nation will operate.
McKinney’s Sunset Amphitheater is expected to support 1,300 direct and indirect jobs and create $3 billion in regional and local economic activity in its first decade of operation, according to estimates provided by Notes Live.
Roth, who started prepared foods company Roth Premium Foods, watched the front-to-end overhauls of football and baseball arenas and stadiums and pondered what it would mean to apply the approach to a music venue.
Ideas for the venue sprung from a combination of removing the things that are frustrating at highly trafficked events and putting high-end finishes at every experience level.
The little things that add up in Roth’s book are additions like three lanes dedicated for rideshare pickup and drop-off, which feeds into simpler ingress and egress for parking lots, and abundant restrooms so there aren’t lengthy wait times or distant hikes.
The premium experience Roth came up with starts from the ground up — literally. Lawn seats at Notes Live incorporate HydroChill technology. Ahead of an event, the company will cool the bead system beneath the turf to just below 70 degrees, and for four to five hours, concert-goers will enjoy a more comfortable experience.
The emphasis on comfort spreads to the air movement system incorporated in the complex’s design. While it could be 105 degrees outside after the sun goes down on a Texas summer night, the amphitheater’s temperature should be about 20 to 25 degrees cooler, Roth said.
Notes Live, which has former Dallas Cowboys player Chad Hennings serving on its board of directors, has grown its balance sheet to over $300 million in the last 12 months. The firm is entirely equity-backed, primarily by family offices and other shareholders, and doesn’t utilize debt, Roth said.
Its premise puts an emphasis on growing markets, seen in its portfolio of investments in Broken Arrow, Gainesville, Ga., Murfreesboro, Tenn., and Oklahoma City.
Notes Live worked with Maher Maso, former mayor of Frisco and a principal at Dallas-based Ryan LLC with expertise in Texas incentives, on its site selection in North Texas. McKinney Mayor George Fuller reached out to Maso about the city’s interest in landing Notes Live.
The selection of McKinney for this project — and others that have landed in McKinney for that matter — boils down to how deliberate the city has been, Fuller said. The city, for instance, has purchased property so that it can control what happens and not trust it to the private markets when it comes to certain high-profile parcels.
“We can sit back and hope things happen the way we want, or we can be very proactive. Those decisions are what helped drive what happened here,” Fuller said.
Roth said Notes Live deals with municipalities all over the country, and there are two types: those with a vision and those that come to every meeting with a deal prevention team. He said there’s not a single person on the leadership team in McKinney in the deal prevention business.
Fuller said he’s as excited about the social aspect of the project as he is its economic impact.
“A lot of people will be coming to McKinney, which is great from an economic development standpoint, but I’m one that believes music transcends everything and brings people together,” he said.
When asked who they’d like to see perform at the venue, Roth listed king of country music George Strait and Fuller concurred. Fuller also gave a nod to Bob Seger, health permitting.
The mayor also mentioned the Maylee Thomas Band that features his wife as lead singer. Fuller is a guitarist for the band.
Construction is expected to kick off later this year. Roth said it could be completed in late 2025, but the official opening is set for 2026.
