Community members enter the newly complete Gas City Performing Arts Center for the ribbon cuttingon Thursday. Staff photo by Morgan Keller
The Gas City Performing Arts Center is open for business following a ribbon cutting Thursday.
The 1,830-seat venue will be home to a variety of events like live music. While concerts are a common type of show to take place in a performing arts center, the performing arts center wants to think outside the box and host a wider variety of events too.
Gas City Mayor Bill Rock mentioned art displays or school events as possibilities. David Slaughter, owner of Noteworthy Entertainment, the company the city partnered with to manage the performing arts center said other possibilities include events by non-profits, the city or private events.
“I think the overarching goal to me is to just find all the ways possible that make sense that you can have the building to utilize for the community in the region,” Slaughter said. “...I think we can be a lot of different things to a lot of people. And I think we can have things that appeal to a wide variety of interests, from, you know, entertainment things, or some of the community things.”
The performing arts center already has tickets on sale for six shows, including a classic rock experience, a Beatles tribute, Roots & Boots featuring Aaron Tippin, Sammy Kershaw and Collin Raye and a Christmas concert by Michael W. Smith.
Slaughter added they don’t want just people from Gas City or Grant County to come to the shows and that they want to attract people from surrounding counties as well.
The project took about 16 months from start to finish, Rock said, and community members have become more invested and excited about the center the closer it got to completion.
The project received funding from the READI grant and when they were still a little short of the funding goal, the Grant County Commissioners and Council provided ARPA funds.
“They [saw] the value of what this would help for Grant County, because it seems like Grant County lately, everybody wants to pull it down, and they know that we were trying to push it up,” Rock said. “And so, they wanted to help push it up and create something that families could use, that people could tour into the county, and they’re going to get hotels that are going to get full on some of these events, food, people are going to go eat, gas. The more people we can pull into our county or our city in a positive manner, the more the word gets out in the state of Indiana, and people will travel. And what do they say? ‘You build it, they’ll come.’ And that’s what Gas City is doing. We’re building it, and they will come.”
For Rock, the performing arts center is about quality of life and place.
“I think is very important for people to see that, ‘Hey, this is a small community, but they have created quality of life, quality of place,’” Rock said, “just like some of the things that we’ve added beforehand. And now with this, it just keeps getting a little better every, every year, and we’ve got more in the plans that’s going to make Gas City even more recognizable throughout the state.”
Tyler Warman is the director of intergovernmental affairs in the governor’s office and came to the ribbon cutting as a representative of Governor Holcomb.
“What we’re seeing throughout the country, but especially in Indiana, we want people to stay here. We want people to come here. We need to build the environment that keep our young people… here,” Warman said. “And that involves quality of life, quality of place, projects, amenities. …Each community will have different requests, different desires, different needs, different wants, and with the READI program, $500 million spread out throughout the state and every county, will be having an investment in quality-of-life projects, from housing, from culture, it’s just a massive investment in small communities, large communities and everything in between, including right here in Gas City.”
Slaughter said entertainment is how people celebrate community.
“As a culture, we kind of look for these types of gatherings to really celebrate our community. And community could be 10 people, it could be 10,000 people, but I just think that … there’s just so much loneliness, and people feel so connected yet so detached in terms of their community and fellowship and just being with other people. And one of the ways we like-mindedly enjoy being together is by coming together with concerts.”
Copyright © 2025 Chronicle-Tribune