YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio – A new venue for live music will soon open downtown, filling the need for a space that can hold an audience of 500 to 1,000 people.
It will be in Penguin City Brewing Co.’s Pollock Ballroom – a massive room at the rear of the building.
The space, which the brewery already uses for some events, is being converted into a performance hall. It will have a fixed stage, lighting, a permanent sound system and bathrooms.
Most importantly, the room’s walls will be lined with sound baffling tiles that will improve the audio quality of music coming from amplifiers. The tiles will reduce the sound distortion and echo that currently exists in the high-ceilinged industrial space.
There currently is no place downtown that can hold a crowd of around a thousand people, said Aspasia Lyras-Bernacki, co-owner of the brewery. Demand from promoters for such a space is strong, she said.
Penguin City occasionally uses the room for vendor markets, boxing and MMA bouts, rentals and other events.
The room still has the raw industrial look that the entire structure had when it was used as a structural steel warehouse. Its steel-beam ceiling is dozens of feet high, and some of the walls are still in the original concrete, brick and steel. An industrial crane, from the building’s original usage as a warehouse for steel beams, still hangs over the floor.
That industrial look is part of the room’s history and character and will remain intact, Lyras-Bernacki said.
One major concert has taken place there already – a reunion show last summer by Gil Mantera’s Party Dream. The band includes Penguin City co-owner Richard Bernacki.
The room capably accommodated 1,000 spectators for that concert. The sound quality at the rear of the room was marred by echo, but the brewery’s owners learned from that event and developed a plan to correct the room’s shortcomings.
The sound baffling treatment along the wall opposite the stage “will warm up the room,” Lyras-Bernacki said. The other walls will also be improved.
The stage has already been installed. The acoustic tiles and the speakers – which will hang from the ceiling – will be put in next, according to Lyras-Bernacki.
The venue will not have permanent seats, Lyras-Bernacki said, so that it can be rearranged to suit any event. For concerts, it will likely be standing room only.
The first show for the new venue has already been booked. The bands Live Wire and Space Frehley – tribute acts for the rock bands Motley Crue and Ace Frehley, respectively – will perform May 9. Tickets are on sale HERE.
Promoters are already showing interest in the room for more events.
“We’ve had them come in here and tell us they are interested,” Lyras-Bernacki said. “It’s an interesting place for them because there’s not many places around here that can [accommodate] a thousand people.”
For the venue to be viable, it must have a stage, lighting and a sound system in place, Lyras-Bernacki said. Otherwise, promoters would have to rent those things, making the hall cost-prohibitive for them.
The Penguin City space will not affect business at existing downtown concert venues, including Covelli Centre, Powers Auditorium, Ford Family Recital Hall and reception rental halls, according to Lyras-Bernacki. “All of them are either too big or too little” for the type of shows Penguin City will attract, she said.
“There’s nothing in that sweet spot of a number, and a lot of acts that are in that range want to come downtown,” she said.
The makeover of the room will cost approximately $80,000, Lyras-Bernacki said. The funding will come from the $700,000 grant Penguin City received from the state’s 2024 capital budget. The rest of the grant has been, or soon will be, used for parking lot paving, ADA accessibility, correction of a septic issue and equipment to improve beer making and distribution.
Jesse Fellows, a Penguin City employee, is largely handling the transformation of the room into a music venue. Fellows owns Slingshot Media Services, which provides audio, visual and lighting for performances and churches. He also handles the sound for live music events in Penguin City’s taproom and is the founder of the Rock Bottom concert series, which takes place in an Austintown church hall.
Pictured at top: Aspasia Lyras-Bernacki stands in front of the newly installed stage in the Pollock Ballroom at Penguin City Brewing.