Question of the Day - 08 October 2019

It's a destination, a platform, an experience.

It’s a content box for the 21st century, the gateway into a new economy.

It's retail, entertainment, and art redefined. 

It’s a portal into a wholly reimagined world weaving together events, art, brands, technology, and design that will make you forget everything you know about what an event venue is supposed to be. 

At least all that’s the hype that’s been splashed around the Web and print media since Area 15 was announced last year.

What it will actually (as opposed to virtually) be, when it opens at 3215 S. Rancho Drive just west of I-15 early next year, is a nearly 200,000-square-foot mall of sorts whose name not only refers to the interstate, but reverses the digits of Area 51. It will have 40,000 square feet of indoor-outdoor event space “ideally suited for live music, festivals, corporate events, private parties, esports tournaments, and much more” and 15 storefronts “infinitely customizable for a curated collection of experimental entertainment, immersive retail, and other businesses looking for something outside the staid retail environment.”

The “backbone tying everything together is the Spine, an ever-changing corridor filled with one-of-a-kind art installations, engaging brand activations, unique commerce, and inspiring food and beverage offerings.”

The anchor tenant is Meow Wolf, the Santa Fe-based "art collective turned conglomerate," in the words of Rolling Stone, that launched in 2008 with the popular and surreal “House of Eternal Return” exhibit and now creates and supports art across a variety of media, including architecture, sculpture, painting, photography, video production, music and audio engineering, narrative writing, costuming, and performance.

Beyond that, a story in the Review-Journal described Area 15 as “carrying some of the more fanciful elements of the Life is Beautiful Festival and Burning Man.”

Other than Meow Wolf, three tenants have been announced: Emack and Bolio’s, a chain of ice-cream stores based in Boston and founded three years before Ben & Jerry’s as the first bona fide hippie ice creamery; Nomadic, “the most deeply immersive, tactile, and realistic virtual reality experiences ever developed,” in a 6,000-square-foot space near Meow Wolf; and Dueling Axes, a Columbus, OH,-based axe-throwing business. The concert/lecture/live-entertainment space will accommodate 3,000.

And the Director of Content and Cool S**t is Chris Wink, one of the three founders of Blue Man Group (which was acquired by Cirque du Soleil a couple years ago).

Look for a lot more hype and many more announcements in the build-up to opening. You can also see the all-black building as you’re driving south on I-15; look to the right just before you come to Trump Tower.