Sandy Amphitheater wins applause as gathering place

SANDY — Can you name the local gathering place that's small enough to serve Sandy City and its residents, yet attracts people from all over the valley? It's the Sandy Amphitheater.

Now entering its sixth season, the amphitheater was originally designed as a little community gathering place where the Sandy Arts Guild could put on summer musicals, according to Steven Ireland, marketing intern for Sandy community events.

Few permanent seats were in place at the time, so the audience mostly sat on the lawn. But it didn't take long for this venue to be discovered.

A remodel upped the number of permanent seats to 960, with room for another 2,040 people on the lawn. And last summer all that space was filled for such sell-out concerts as Air Supply. "We sold more tickets (last year) than we ever have before," said Ireland. "We sold 31,000 tickets last year."

The current vision for the amphitheater is two-fold. On the one hand, big-name groups attract an audience from all over the valley — America, the Lettermen, Christopher Cross and Gordon Lightfoot. "We try to expand for those kids of acts, expand our reach and advertising to reach the whole Salt Lake Valley," Ireland said

On the other hand, the focus is pared down for the Orchestra and Choir of Sandy City and such solo artists as Jon Schmidt and Peter Breinholt.

The amphitheater also tries not to go head-to-head with such larger venues as USANA for big-name groups. "That's just not what we can do, We're more of a community thing. So we bring in the older acts — the '60s, '70s, and some of the '80s people."

During an average summer season, a subscriber package will include six national and international acts and two musicals put on by the Sandy Arts Guild.

In addition, there are "free-for-all" concerts — designed as family oriented programs at no charge — featuring the Utah Symphony and Opera and local folk dancers.

Individual ticket-sale concerts are also included for some local artists, such as Jericho Road or Ryan Shupe and the Rubber Band.

"(Some local) groups actually do their largest summer shows each year right here at the Sandy Amphitheater," said Ireland. "We get very good turnout for them."

While the amphitheater serves the entire community, Ireland said that it stays afloat mostly through the generosity of private, corporate and community sponsorships.

"We're not a . . . nonprofit yet," said Ireland. "We're in the process of trying to get that rectified so that we can tap into (public) funds. We're working on it as we speak."

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E-mail: rcline@desnews.com