The United Center Campus · Damen and Adams · Opening 2028
- What We’re BuildingThe history, the gap, the connection to the campus
- The Music HallArchitecture, interior, and what sits beside it
- Fan ExperiencesSeats, sightlines, merch
- Artist ExperiencesThe compound, and the residency it enables
- Programming VisionEvery genre, every generation
- Partnership PhilosophyThree spaces, one relationship each
What We’re Building
Since 1994, the United Center has carried the Bulls, the Blackhawks, and the legacy of Chicago Stadium’s stage.
For thirty years, the campus has been missing the one thing that could turn it from an arena into a cultural heartbeat: a room built for music alone.
Wirtz has described it as building around the connection between an artist and their fans. Reinsdorf calls it a way to connect the campus with the West Side, and with Chicago itself.
The room the campus never built
The club
→
This room
→
United Center
An artist can play a Chicago club at 200, then 600, and the United Center at 20,000, and until now there has been nothing in between built for them. One organization now owns the middle and the top. The same people who book the largest arena in the NBA book this room.
The United Center and the Music Hall. The same operation.
Chicago built a house for opera.
A house for the symphony.
A palace for movies.
A hall for dancing.
A theater inside a convention center.
It never built one for the music that started here.
Chess Recordsa storefront
The Warehousea warehouse
Metroa Swedish community hall
Radiusa steel mill
The Salt Shedheld salt
Chicago Stadiumhosted Miles and Ella, never built for them
Every room that made Chicago music was something else first.
Archival image pending — The Auditorium Building, Adler & Sullivan, 1889
In 1889, Ferdinand Peck told Adler and Sullivan to build the best room in the world for the music of their moment. They did, and it still seats 3,875 today.
Twice in almost 150 years
The Music Hall
6,000 Capacity, Scalable to 2,500
Damen and Adams, Chicago West Side
Architect — RIOS, Mark Taper Forum
Acoustician — Kirkegaard, Carnegie Hall
Groundbreaking 2026 · Opening 2028
Phase One, The 1901 Project
Built for one thing.
Nothing was converted
to make it fit.
From the ground up, every decision serves the performance and the listening. Three levels of seating, seated or standing, floor through mezzanine and balcony. No obstructed views from any of them. Acoustics engineered by Kirkegaard. Dynamic lighting, wide walkways, serving areas sized so the room keeps moving.
RIOS · Kirkegaard · No obstructed views
The street level belongs to the neighborhood, not to the ticket.
Two restaurants flank the main entryway, open seven days a week to ticket holders and everyone else alike. Dining and retail run along the first floor, local operators and strategic partners alike, across 80,000 square feet in the music hall and two adjacent buildings.
On show nights ticketed guests order from the lobby level without leaving the building. On the other three hundred nights it is simply a place on the West Side that is open, and welcoming to anyone who wants to feel what’s happening.
80,000 sq ft · open seven days · ticket not required
Fan Experiences
Every seat.
An actual seat.
No obstructed views from any level, floor through mezzanine to balcony. Wide walkways and serving areas sized so the room keeps moving between sets. Merch at three points, one on each concourse, one in the Premium Club.
2,500 to 6,000 · seated or standing
Artist Experiences
The artist compound is the only room the public never sees.
Accessible from the moment of arrival through curtain close. Backstage carries the personality and voice of the venue rather than the standard grey corridor, and a 187-key hotel, retail and dining sit within steps of the door. That combination is what turns a date into a residency. An artist here is a guest, never the talent.
A partner lives here as a host, never as a logo
Programming Vision
Every genre.
Every generation.
Today’s headliners and the artists who influenced them, booked without regard for lineage or format. Easy load-ins, top-tier production, and a hotel next door turn a single date into a residency.
“The kind of connection between artist and audience that makes a show memorable.”
Matt Rucins, Director of Content and Programming
Programming underway since May 2026 · no lineup to lock in yet
Partnership Philosophy
Three spaces.
Not four.
Which is why what comes next isn’t sponsorship. We don’t have sponsors. We have partners. Instead of banners, we have belief. You’ve already walked through two of the three spaces a partner can actually live in. Here is the third, and how all three work.
Our partners enhance
the fan experience.
The terrace, the concourse, the club: real spaces guests already move through, not ad space bolted on. A presence there, on a night it already belongs to, does more than a banner ever could.
Marketing here means presence, not placement
The third space is small on purpose.
Two owner’s suites hold twelve to twenty. Twenty premium theater boxes seat four each. Both open directly into the Premium Club, also available as an upgrade on any ticket, limited to the capacity of the room.
The outdoor terrace faces the United Center across the campus. A partner here is not buying reach. They are buying the smallest number of people in the building on a given night. Off nights, the same rooms rent as private space.
2 owner’s boxes · 20 theater boxes · premium club · terrace
The Music Hall is the catalyst of the 1901 Project, turning 55 acres of the West Side into the connective tissue the campus has been missing. The Music Hall is where the next era begins.
The Music Hall
of Chicago
of Chicago
Opening 2028