Is Gatton Park too expensive for Lexington performers? Facebook post ignites debate
Since Gatton Park on the Town Branch opened in August, it has hosted community fitness events, movie nights for families and holiday events complete with decorative lights and an 80-foot Christmas tree.
But the park has not hosted many concerts yet, and some fear it will not be an accessible venue for local performers.
In a Dec. 4 Facebook post that gained traction online, Mélisse Brunet, music director for the Lexington Philharmonic, said the park’s booking costs are too high.
“It appears that renting the stage for one day costs $15,000 and that we also need to pay for our own security team, team to set up the audience chairs, ticketing team (at different places in the park), fences, etc,” Brunet wrote in the post, “which drives the cost up to about $40,000, not counting the cost of producing a concert.”
“My dream was that (the Lexington Philharmonic) could provide at least one free concert a year in that park for our community. Instead, the park is only affordable for big touring companies,” Brunet wrote.
Commenters on the post shared frustration at the idea of Gatton Park not being accessible to local acts.
But the Lexington Philharmonic and Gatton Park say they are working together to bring arts to the new downtown park.
“Our organizations have been in active conversations about potential future programming at the park, and LexPhil appreciates Gatton Park’s ongoing efforts to create an arts-friendly space that supports local organizations and community access,” the two organizations said in a Dec. 6 joint statement
Gatton Park — privately operated by a nonprofit board — opened this summer after nearly a decade of fundraising and two years of construction. The park is the result of one of the largest fundraising campaigns in the city’s history, earning $55 million in donations to redevelop a former parking lot by Rupp Arena into a 12-acre green space.
A prominent feature of the park is a 5,000-seat outdoor amphitheater called CommonSpirit Health Stage. The venue hosted a number of local musicians at the park’s grand opening in August and has since seen a performance by the Beach Boys in September.
The $15,000 rental fee Brunet cited in her post came from a preliminary figure park staff gave the philharmonic, according to Gatton Park CEO Allison Lankford and Lexington Philharmonic Executive Director Brooke Raby. The philharmonic staff shared ideas for the types of shows they wanted to do at the park, and Gatton Park staff returned some estimates.
“Based upon our grand opening and other things, we sent them a couple of numbers,” Lankford told the Herald-Leader, “and in the correspondence … we said, ‘this is a very rough estimate. If anything, we think this is high.’”
When reached by the Herald-Leader, Brunet declined to comment further on the post or the fees.
Gatton Park does not yet have a flat rate it charges performers for using the stage. Since the park is new and staff are still figuring out the logistics of how to run shows there, costs up this point have been determined on a case-by-case basis with interested parties, Lankford said.
Raby said conversations with Gatton Park have been productive and are ongoing.
“It takes a series of conversations to best assess each other’s needs, everyone’s goals and their capacities, and try to turn that into a tenable plan,” Raby said. “Gatton Park has been really open to continuing conversations with us … these aren’t questions that get answered in one meeting.”
Gatton Park partners with Oak View Group to book performances at the park. That company also manages booking for Rupp Arena and the Lexington Opera House.
Largely, Gatton Park manages space rentals in direct conversation with local arts groups like the philharmonic, Lankford said.
Public reaction
Brunet’s post struck a new note in a decades-long conversation about how performing groups struggle to afford and access space at Lexington venues.
Gatton Park is far from the only venue local groups may struggle to book, Heather Lyons, former director of arts and cultural affairs for the city, told the Herald-Leader.
“The space issue has been a huge problem for local groups for a very long time, and it has held organizations back and limited the growth of the arts in Lexington,” Lyons said.
There are few venues that can serve the needs of groups perfectly, Lyons said. Some were designed specifically for music performances, so dance groups cannot effectively use those stages, for example. Other spaces are designed well for dance and theater, but seat very limited numbers of people.
On top of physical design, the high costs of putting on shows is a consistent barrier.
Lyons says as new spaces for the arts are developed, more work needs to be done early in the design and fundraising process to ensure there are ways local groups across artistic disciplines can use them.
Funding pools like the Opera House Fund, a dedicated grant pool for local groups who want to perform at The Lexington Opera House but cannot afford the fees, can help. New and existing venues could establish those types of grant pools with support from community donors, Lyons said.
“People have to understand that it is local artists and local organizations that truly build an arts community. Local artists are people who are also teaching at university, at schools. They’re giving private lessons. It’s so important to put a priority around what can we do to serve local art forms.”
Lankford says Gatton Park has been actively working to make the space as affordable as possible for nonprofit organizations. That work will continue throughout 2026 as the park hosts more shows and gets a firmer sense of what is required.
But the park is a nonprofit itself, relying on private donations and earned revenue to stay afloat, as opposed to the tax-based funding public parks receive.
“We would love nothing more than to completely offer that space to our local arts community for free,” Lankford said. “Right now, that’s not possible. We absolutely want to make it work for the philharmonic, so let’s do everything we can to make it accessible and affordable.”
Raby says she is “extremely optimistic” the Lexington Philharmonic will take the stage at Gatton Park in the future.
“We all have a responsibility to channel passion (for the arts) into partnerships with everybody — all the venues and all the organizations,” Raby said. “The only way that we can all make this happen is together.”
