Blumenthal Arts lands on prominent uptown site near stadium for new immersive shows home

After two years of searching, Blumenthal Arts has landed on a prominent site near Bank of America Stadium for its new immersive experience programming.

And the first show is literally out of this world, taking people 250 miles to the International Space Station.

The earthly location is the former Charlotte Pipe and Foundry site, once thought to be a possible home for a new stadium for Carolina Panthers and Charlotte FC billionaire owner David Tepper. Instead, Blumenthal Arts will be the first tenant in a new 55-acre “Iron District,” leasing most of a 1 .5-acre warehouse from Charlotte Pipe and Foundry that’s less than a half-mile from Bank of America Stadium.

The pipe and foundry company had relocated its operations to Stanly County in the fall, but still owns the entire site.

The new immersive-exhibits space is called Blume Studios.

Last week, Blumenthal Arts president and CEO Tom Gabbard gave The Charlotte Observer a tour of the new site and spoke of the significance immersive space holds for the future of the organization.

“We have a very bold vision of what we want to do here,” Gabbard said. “The kinds of projects that this will be home to will need massive space. They need ceiling height, a lot of open space, and after two years of searching, we were just thrilled to be a part of the beginning of the Iron District.”

Blumenthal’s total expected investment in the site wasn’t immediately available.

The sheet-metal warehouse with steel girders is tall and expansive enough for the kind of gigantic immersive exhibits for which Blumenthal Arts is already known, Gabbard said.

Blumenthal will lease 32,000 square feet of the 40,000-square-foot warehouse, he said. The remaining space will become part of a larger development as the Iron District takes off,” Gabbard said.

Its record-breaking run of “Immersive Van Gogh” at Camp North End closed in January 2022 with an unprecedented 1,600 performances and more than 300,000 tickets sold during its half-year run. The 360-degree digital show projected Van Gogh’s moving masterpieces onto walls from floor to ceiling in a large space set to music.

About 35% of visitors “came from beyond 90 minutes,” Gabbard said. “And I think that will be the case with our shows here.”

Blumenthal also has more than $2 million worth of digital equipment and furniture it bought for “Immersive Van Gogh” in storage, Gabbard told the Observer last year. That includes 103 digital projectors, 22 servers, 19 miles of fiber optics and a lot of furniture.

“We’ve become an international leader in this genre,” Gabbard said last week. “Our experience with the Van Gogh caught the attention of people around the world.”

Blumenthal has two years of shows “in the pipeline” for the new site, starting with Montreal-based “Space Explorers: The Infinite” Sept. 20-Nov. 10.

Leaning into the immersive world

Blumenthal opened in 1992 as a multi-venue performing arts complex. It now ranks among the nation’s largest not-for-profit arts organizations, adding at least $80 million a year to the local economy, according to its website.

Its Broadway tour season is the longest in the Carolinas. And now it’s ensuring that immersive shows are a regular part of its repertoire.

“People can expect to see big, bold projects exploring different kinds of technology,” Gabbard said, “but also, over time, things that are very theatrical — and coming from across the world.”

He’s keeping mum about the projects beyond “The Infinite.”

“We think it’s really important to the future,” Gabbard said about expanding into the immersive exhibits realm. “Not just to the Blumenthal, but to the entire creative community here. “We love the tried and true, but we also want to be an institution that’s forward thinking, and this place gives us that opportunity.

“Being part of positive change for our community, that’s what Blumenthal’s wired to do,” Gabbard said of the expansion. “For us to be out here, we describe this as ‘phase zero,’ to be here on the front end and be a magnet and plant a creative flag here.”

World’s largest immersive outer space exhibit

The first experience that will touch down in the warehouse, “Space Explorers: The Infinite,” is “the world’s largest immersive exhibit about life in space,” according to the exhibit website.

“It is going to be a big draw,” Gabbard predicted. “We’ll be one of the few cities that hosts many of these exhibitions. This opening show will only have been in four cities.”

“The whole experience is as if you’re on the Space Station,” Gabbard said. “It was created in partnership with NASA.”

Visitors wear an Oculous lens whose 360 HD footage puts them on the Space Station. They “step outside the station to take in the heavens, and they hear content from the astronauts themselves about what they do on the Space Station,” Gabbard said.

“You learn a lot about the science of it, but also, most of all, the human piece of being on the International Space Station,” he said.

Weekday tickets start at $44.95 for adults and $29.95 for children.

As with the Van Gogh exhibit, local artists will decorate the warehouse for “Space Explorers: The Infinite.”

“And we’ll create sales opportunities to put money into the arts community as well, through our merch area,” he said. “Artists will be able to display their work and make it available for sale.”

Visitors also will find free offerings during the show’s run.

“People can come here without a ticket to enjoy other things,” Gabbard said, including food and drink (for sale) and two free experiences from overseas:

▪ Groundswell, a plastic clear disc from Australia that visitors stand on as it sways, the disc supported by ball bearings beneath it.

▪ U.K. artist Luke Jerram’s “Gaia” earth artwork that Gabbard described as “a giant inflatable earth.” This marks a return of the globe to town, which already has appeared, for instance, as part of the Blumenthal’s Charlotte International Arts Festival.

Pipe and Foundry plans

One of Charlotte’s oldest businesses, the 122-year-old Charlotte Pipe and Foundry moved in October to its new $460 million plant on 700 acres in Oakboro, Stanly County.

The company still uses the Charlotte warehouse to ship cast iron fittings, spokesman Brad Muller said, but will vacate the space by month’s end so work on the Blumenthal exhibit can begin.

Pipe and Foundry still owns the entire 55 acres, he said.

Blumenthal’s immersive exhibit space “is the first tenant of many to come,” Muller said, referring to the Iron District at South Clarkson Street and West Summit Avenue.

The name of the district “is a nod to the legacy” of the company’s long presence there, Muller said.

Pipe and Foundry officials expect to have further news about the district in a few weeks. It appears the site still has room for potential operations by the Panthers or Charlotte FC, although Muller on Saturday declined to say if the teams are interested in using any aspect of the property.

“We’re still formulating plans and reviewing ideas, so we’re not ready quite to make any news” about further plans or prospective tenants for the district, Muller told the Observer at the warehouse Thursday. “But we are thrilled to welcome our first tenant to the Iron District.”

Snagging the immersive space

How Blumenthal landed the space was “quintessential Charlotte about how things get done,” Gabbard said.

In August 2022, developer Johno Harris arranged a dinner with Charlotte Pipe and Foundry CEO Hooper Hardison and their wives, and Blumenthal officials, Gabbard said.

Gabbard mentioned to Hardison during the dinner that “we’ve really been looking for a place.”

“What about the warehouse?” Harris asked Hardison.

“A year and a half later, Hooper said, ‘Can we have coffee?’ ” Gabbard told the Observer. “That’s when he began to talk to me about the Iron District, the warehouse, would we be interested?”

Embracing the warehouse

School groups will be able to visit the exhibit Monday through Thursday mornings.

“We’ll see a lot of school buses dropping off kids,” Gabbard said. “And we’re also working with our friends in Montreal to create education resources” so the exhibit fits school curricula. “I think it could really energize kids’ thinking for years to come.

“The other really cool thing about the exhibit is that, so you don’t run into other people, avatars of other people in the room will appear,” he said. “And if you’re with a group of people, the other avatars are a different color, so you’ll know who your friends are, and it will keep people from running into each other.”

The warehouse is in great shape, Gabbard said. Blumenthal will need to make only a few improvements to make it more accessible to the public, he said.

For immersive exhibits, curtains will divide warehouse space, Gabbard said. “But this is beautiful architecture. We really want to embrace the beauty of this warehouse.

Visitors should expect Blume Studios to be different every time they come out, he said.

“Development of the campus will be over many, many years, and people will be asking, ‘What’s the latest thing going on in the Iron District?’

“We intend to have all sorts of wonderful things that explore the arts, technology and the community,” Gabbard said.

About ‘The Infinite’

Cost: Weekday tickets start at $44.95 for adults and $29.95 for children and are on sale at blumenthalarts.org/infinite.

Address: 904 Post St., Charlotte, NC 28208.

Parking: Free on site.

Details: 704-372-1000; BlumenthalArts.org.

Observer reporter Catherine Muccigrosso contributed to this report

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