It looks like I.M.P., the Montgomery County-based company that runs the 9:30 Club and Merriweather Post Pavilion, hasn’t given up on opening a Silver Spring music hall. In September, we wrote that concert producer and venue owner Live Nation had signed a non-binding letter of intent to put a Fillmore music hall in the old J.C. Penney store at Georgia Avenue and Colesville Road in Silver Spring, across from the AFI Silver Theater.
Both the Birchmere and I.M.P. had been interested in the location, according to the City Paper, but Live Nation, the Clear Channel spin-off that owns the House of Blues chain, the Nissan Pavilion and operates or books shows at the Warner Theater, DAR Constitution Hall, and the Verizon Center seemed to have won out.
However, the story doesn’t end there. On Tuesday we received a letter I.M.P. chairman Seth Hurwitz sent on Monday to Montgomery County Executive Isaiah Leggett, asking the county to consider his company for the location instead. In the letter, Hurwitz argues that I.M.P. would better serve the county, pay twice the rent, and require fewer government expenditures than Live Nation’s venture, the aforementioned Fillmore music hall.
A day later, Leggett responded to Hurwitz saying “Montgomery County has negotiated a letter of intent with Live Nation and will not negotiate with other parties.” Leggett’s letter, which we first saw on the Silver Spring Penguin blog, continued that “[i]t would be inappropriate for the county to enter into an agreement with one operator only to subsequently decide to engage in simultaneous negotiations with a second proposed operator. This would be unacceptable.” The letter says that county Chief Administrative Officer Tim Firestine met with Hurwitz in October and told him as much.
