Three years after The BayCare Sound opened in Clearwater’s Coachman Park with a free concert, the amphitheater is regularly attracting thousands of attendees and being credited with bringing business to a historically quiet downtown.
While Clearwater officials debated for years about whether the venue’s expense would be worth it, leaders are celebrating it for contributing to what they’ve deemed an urban renaissance.
The Sound has cemented itself as a top mid-size music venue and brought in more than 432,000 visitors since it opened in June 2023. Pollstar, a trade publication for live entertainment, last year ranked it No. 3 in the world for amphitheaters, based on ticket sales for venues of its size.
The city spent nearly three decades trying to develop the waterfront, with the amphitheater ultimately serving as the anchor for an $84 million makeover of Coachman Park. City leaders say the venue has already exceeded their expectations.
“The proof is in the pudding,” former Mayor Frank Hibbard said.
Despite price tag, Clearwater leaders happy
The Sound has 4,000 covered seats and space for 5,000 people on the lawn. The city estimates the final construction cost of the amphitheater — excluding the cost of design — was roughly $38 million.
That’s more than double what officials estimated in 2019. But Allie Chandler Baier, a spokesperson for the city, wrote in an email that the project “moved forward during a period of significant construction-market volatility,” such as increased materials costs and disruptions to the supply chain.
The city owns the amphitheater, but the City Council in 2022 hired Ruth Eckerd Hall to manage the venue. The performing arts organization also runs the concert venue by the same name and The Nancy and David Bilheimer Capitol Theatre.
Clearwater gets paid for every ticket sold. From April 2023 to March 2026, the city received $1.6 million in ticket revenue.
Based on an agreement with Clearwater, once the venue has a profit margin of at least 8%, Ruth Eckerd will pay the city a 25% share. It hasn’t yet reached that threshold.
Through the next decade, the city will receive an additional $5.4 million through a naming rights deal with the BayCare Health System.
In a quarterly update to the City Council last month, Ruth Eckerd CEO Susan M. Crockett said the venue generated $3.6 million in tax revenue in 2025, which includes sales tax and the county’s tourist tax.
The amphitheater’s economic impact was $110.4 million last year, according to Crockett’s presentation. That figure was $21.2 million in the first year.
“Their numbers are impressive,” said City Manager Jennifer Poirrier. She said business owners appreciate that the venue has brought people downtown.
During the meeting, council member David Allbritton applauded the number of events the venue has held and said it exceeded the city‘s initial expectations. In 2025, there were 65 events.
“We had no idea,” Allbritton said. “I commend you for doing that and having that much entertainment here because it’s really, really made a big difference.”
Bookings grow at BayCare Sound
In the venue’s first six months, The BayCare Sound secured performances from the Goo Goo Dolls, Colbie Caillat and Ringo Starr.
Since then, the venue has continued to grow and attract a range of artists across genres and generations — including the likes of Diana Ross, Willie Nelson, rapper T-Pain and indie singer Remi Wolf.
Electronic dance music has been a particular draw for the venue. Its seating can be configured in different ways based on what the artist wants, said Bobby Rossi, executive vice president and chief entertainment officer at Ruth Eckerd.
The venue also hosts graduations, children’s events and even comedians, like Nikki Glaser.
The BayCare Sound has found a niche as a mid-sized venue in Tampa Bay — offering a bigger option than the 2,180-seat Ruth Eckerd Hall but a more intimate setting than the MidFlorida Credit Union Amphitheatre in Tampa, which has a 20,000-person capacity.
“We’re producing close to 250 concerts a year in Clearwater alone between the three venues,” Rossi said. “We’ve got 250 reasons to come over here now that may not have been there in the ‘80s or ‘90s.”
In April, more than 5,000 people bought tickets to see the rock band Goose. The evening felt more like a festival than a traditional concert. Fans clad in tie-dye flooded the venue, running to grab a spot in the pit before the show began. They formed lines around food trucks and merchandise tents and danced on the lawn.
Courtney Ellis, 52, traveled to the concert from Denver with her husband. She used to live in Tampa but left in 1991 — more than 30 years before The BayCare Sound would arrive.
“It’s fabulous,” she said. ”I love the venue. It’s spacious. There’s room to dance."
Three-decade fight for waterfront venue
Voters in 2000 and 2004 rejected referendums that would have allowed for an amphitheater at Coachman Park.
Throughout the years, community members voiced skepticism about the proposed size of an amphitheater and cost to taxpayers. The City Council in 2019 settled on an amphitheater with 4,000 covered seats after former Ruth Eckerd Hall President and CEO Zev Buffman made the case to city staff that the park needed a venue of that size.
Hibbard, who is on the board of Ruth Eckerd Hall and served for more than a decade in separate terms at city hall, was a proponent of a larger amphitheater.
“The evolution of Coachman Park was one of the reasons I ran again,” he said. “I wanted to make sure it got done right.”
Before the transformation, the park wasn’t used much. The city used to host hip-hop and alternative rock concerts at a smaller bandshell. Some community members were upset with the noise and explicit language, but even then the concerts were lucrative.
The 19-acre Coachman Park is now an active green space, with a playground and splash pad. The city regularly holds events like a monthly market and free yoga at sunset. The world’s largest rubber duck graced the park earlier this year.
City officials worked to quickly secure the Country Thunder music festival in May — which brought a number of performers, including Shaboozey and Dasha. The festival was originally planned for St. Pete Beach but drew criticism from environmentalists, who worried it would disturb nesting season for shorebirds and sea turtles. More than 30,000 people attended the festival.
“Dunedin is very folky. St. Pete is very visual. What defines Clearwater?” Council member Lina Teixeira said. “I think it became the city of music.”
She said the venue has “far exceeded” her expectations for metrics. And it’s accomplished something she didn’t think could happen for the city: “Fill downtown with young people.”
Companies tied to the Church of Scientology, which has international spiritual headquarters downtown, in 2017 started purchasing swathes of property in downtown Clearwater that have largely remained empty, despite a recent uptick in construction.
Downtown is often quiet. But not when there’s a concert in Coachman Park.
“We can’t control what they do, but we can control what we do,” she said. “We didn’t wait.”
