The Design District is getting its first live-music venue. And it’s in Mark Cuban’s parking lot.

Concert producer and promoter Live Nation Entertainment Inc. is converting an empty warehouse along North Stemmons Freeway into a 1,000-capacity venue called The HiFi Dallas. It’s set to open in May, next door to the Dallas Mavericks’ practice facility along the freeway.

That venue’s size “is the sweet spot we were missing in Dallas,” said Live Nation’s Dave Fortin, senior vice president of marketing and business development.

And, it was Cuban’s idea to start a music scene in a part of town where none currently exists — outside of the American Airlines Center, anyway.

“I just thought it would be fun,” said Cuban, who owns the space and will basically serve as The HiFi Dallas’ landlord. “The Design District has been waiting for an entertainment destination, and the building was the perfect place. And, of course, we have all the parking right there, and it can leverage the traffic coming from the AAC,” which sits just across Stemmons.

Construction crews are working at the new Live Nation concert venue, The HiFi Dallas, which is set to open in Dallas' Design District in May. (Ryan Michalesko / Staff Photographer)

Live Nation currently controls the House of Blues in Victory Park and the Toyota Music Factory in Irving. The Dallas venue holds either 400 (in the Cambridge Room) or 1,650 in the main hall; the Irving center holds anywhere from 2,500 to 8,000, depending on its setup.

Live Nation books concerts in all open venues — including the two BTS shows at the Cotton Bowl in May. But Ron Bension, president of Live Nation’s clubs and theater division, said the company has been on the lookout for something else in Dallas that’s more appropriate for comers on their way up, the local band about to break, perhaps even a marquee act looking for a more intimate space.

"We were very eager to build a special, extremely fan-friendly and tremendously intimate venue in Dallas,” Bension said.

Currently, The HiFi Dallas is a construction site as crews hustle to remake a concrete square that has been many things in its brief lifetime — from a furniture and home décor store to an auction outlet to a carpet cleaner.

County property records show Cuban’s Radical Investments bought the property in May 2016 from Jeff Sinelli, founder of Genghis Grill and Which Wich.

Fortin said Cuban had a chance encounter with Live Nation’s President and CEO Michael Rapino, during which the Mavericks owner pitched the idea of opening a club in the former warehouse.

Bension said Rapino jumped at the chance, in large part, because Dallas is “a great market which we are heavily invested in."

Certainly the timing is right. Less than a decade ago, the west side of Stemmons, sandwiched between a freeway and a Trinity River levee, was little more than warehouses and office space with the occasional antique store — all the fun and feel of an industrial park. Then came the investors, among them Ray Washburne and Tim Headington; the developers, including recent mayoral candidate Mike Ablon; and the restaurateurs, notably Shannon Wynne and Nick Badovinus, and the cider makers and beer brewers.

The interior of The HiFi Dallas looks more than a little like a miniature version of the Bomb Factory in Deep Ellum. Except with far fewer people. (Live Nation Entertainment Inc. / Courtesy)

Last month, more than four years after it was first announced, Virgin Hotels opened its first local outpost in the Design District. And eventually, the former Cabana Motor Hotel on Stemmons Freeway — best known as the place where the Beatles stayed in September 1964 — will reopen, with 260 rooms “as well as the hotel’s original amenities,” according to a recent Dallas City Council briefing, “including restaurant, entertainment and conference facilities.” That redo is being spearheaded by Mehrdad Moayedi, who is also responsible for the Statler hotel’s makeover downtown.

The HiFi Dallas will sit just south of the Mavs’ practice facility and the former Softlayer offices and shares their sole parking lot. It looks today as it always has — white, square, unobtrusive. But renderings provided by Live Nation show it painted black, with a “The HiFi” sign over the entrance.

Inside, it will look sort of like a miniature Bomb Factory, the resurrected Deep Ellum venue that holds up to 4,300 people. There will be an open floor in front of the stage, which juts out into the audience, and it will be ringed by balconies and bars.

Fortin said there will be about 115 fixed seats on the second level — most in the stadium-seating area directly facing the stage. Some shows will have floor-level seating — around 300, give or take. But Fortin said the room can be configured in multiple ways: “We will be able to partition off the lobby, outside, upstairs.” That’s because the room will be available about half the time for events other than concerts, including private parties and weddings.

There will also be a back patio — Live Nation is leaving the trees behind the building — as well as a VIP area upstairs called the Echo Lounge, with its own, more secluded side room for the VVIPs. It does not yet have a name.

The stage level of The HiFi Dallas, which will hold 1,000 when it opens in the Design District in May. (Live Nation Entertainment Inc. / Courtesy)

“Different fans want different types of amenities,” Bension said. “Some want to sit, some want to stand, some want to be in the VIP lounge. We’re really trying to cater to the fans but also make sure when the bands step into the room, they know they’re stepping into a first-class venue in terms of production, hospitality and personnel."

Cuban approached Live Nation, he said, because “they know how to design, build and operate as well as anyone on the planet. They made it an easy decision.”

The first batch of shows won’t be announced until Feb. 10, but Fortin said to expect some so-called “underplays” — that is, acts that might otherwise play bigger venues such as the House of Blues across Stemmons, the South Side Ballroom in the nearby Cedars or the 1,100-capacity Canton Hall in Deep Ellum. Putting big names in a small room makes sense for a venue looking to make a splashy bow.

Fortin said New York City’s Irving Plaza — another Live Nation-controlled venue with roughly the same capacity as The HiFi — is perhaps the best comparison. Shortly before it shuttered for renovations in 2019, Irving Plaza played host to such acts as the Old 97’s, Edie Brickell and New Bohemians, former Jam frontman Paul Weller and a then-newcomer named Billie Eilish. Paul McCartney also performed there in 2015.

Ideally, Fortin said, The HiFi would be a stop between the House of Blues’ Cambridge Room and the arenas: “Artists win. Fans win. Venues win.”

“There is a gap in the Dallas market, and the 1,000-capacity The HiFi will fit this dynamic perfectly,” Bension said, adding, “The HiFi Dallas will be the most intimate, beautiful music venue of its type in Texas.”