The owner of the Met threatens Live Nation with eviction amid lawsuits

On Jan. 2, Mayor-elect Cherelle Parker will be sworn into office in the historic opera house on North Broad Street known as the Met.

The once-crumbling hall was transformed into a 3,500-seat performing arts venue by Eric Blumenfeld, a developer who restored a string of iconic buildings along the once-grand North Philadelphia boulevard. The Met has since hosted acts like Bob Dylan, Janelle Monáe, and Ed Sheeran. Mayor Jim Kenney was inaugurated there in 2020 for his second term.

As the Met enters 2024 with a full slate of national acts, Blumenfeld, who is embroiled in a losing battle with aggrieved lenders over millions in debt on several of his other real estate ventures, is simultaneously waging a legal war aimed at evicting the concert promoter Live Nation from the popular music hall.

Blumenfeld and Live Nation, which leases the opera house, have traded lawsuits for years. But now, even with those cases still pending, Blumenfeld wants to revive an old plan for the building: transforming it into an arts center for a public school campus that would span his remaining North Broad Street properties, such as a parking lot adjacent to the Mural Lofts apartment building.

Blumenfeld proposed a similar plan a decade ago, aiming to consolidate nearby public schools on his land. With the Parker administration taking over, Blumenfeld said, he sees opportunity to resurrect his plan — with or without Live Nation’s involvement.

“One of two things are going to happen,” he said. “Live Nation gets evicted [or] I would hope that we continue to work together. That we continue to make the Met.”

Blumenfeld’s legal conflicts with Live Nation date to 2019, beginning when he sued the promoter for damages related to an alleged breach in their lease agreement. More recently, he has sought to remove the company from the building altogether.

For its part, Live Nation has countersued Blumenfeld, accusing the developer of fraud and alleging that his claims are a cover for an effort to take over the concert business for himself.

Live Nation declined to comment for this article.

These legal conflicts are taking place amid a larger financial crisis for Blumenfeld, who has seen some of his holdings seized by former investors seeking to collect upward of $200 million in combined debts. A series of foreclosure actions earlier this year notably led to Blumenfeld’s loss of the iconic Divine Lorraine Hotel, which he also rehabilitated.

Despite stepping up his efforts to evict Live Nation this year, Blumenfeld said in an interview that he wants to start afresh on a more collaborative future for the Met — if he can get his public school proposal in front of city leadership.

“Let’s talk about what can be,” Blumenfeld said. “I don’t want to talk about where we’re at. Because where we’re at sucks.”

Blumenfeld began efforts to renovate the century-old building in 2012 though a development partnership with the nondenominational Holy Ghost Church, which owned and occupied the decaying structure.

He saw the building’s conversion into an active performing arts hall as the “crown jewel” for a string of nearby residential redevelopments including the Divine Lorraine, that he’d pitched to revive North Broad Street. The same year, he engaged in talks with the district about building a campus for public high school students behind the Divine Lorraine, an idea he is trying to resurrect on different parts of North Broad.

Although that plan fizzled, Blumenfeld successfully opened the Met in 2018 after a $58 million rehab, with Live Nation slated to lease and operate the hall. It has since hosted hundreds of popular concerts and earned millions for Live Nation and Blumenfeld.

Tensions between Blumenfeld and the operator erupted almost immediately and quickly evolved into complex tit-for-tat lawsuits.

In late 2019, Blumenfeld sued Live Nation, alleging that the company owed him certain ticket and sponsorship proceeds from the venue and breached a lease provision allowing the church congregation to continue using the building on Sundays.

“[They owe me] hundreds of thousands of dollars, and they never allowed me to do what I’m supposed to do,” Blumenfeld said in a mid-December interview. “My vision was that … it should be used every day of the year. Even if it costs money to keep the doors open. It’s about being a building of hope, and that I have not been able to do.”

As that action dragged on, Blumenfeld sought a judgment against Live Nation in March 2021 over similar allegations of lease violations, which would have empowered him to remove the company from the building altogether.

Live Nation’s suit contends that it has paid Blumenfeld everything he is owed, amounting to millions annually. Last year, the company sued Blumenfeld, rejecting the developer’s prior legal actions as “false and contrived claims to pay vastly more money than owed under the lease.”

The suit also accused the “flamboyant developer” of engaging in a “secret, wide-ranging, fraudulent and tortious conspiracy” to take control of the lucrative concert business for himself.

It alleges that Blumenfeld attempted to position his company and a new promoter, called “Laff Out Loud Productions” — run by a business associate, the nephew of the former Holy Ghost church congregation leader — to take over concert operations. Blumenfeld eventually sought to “secretly” secure a new liquor license allegedly to deprive Live Nation of lucrative drink sales, according to the suit. Meanwhile, LOL began booking their own events in the Met.

Starting in 2021, the new promoter booked several national acts, including comedian Bill Bellamy and rappers Method Man and Redman, on dates when the venue was not being used by Live Nation. According to the suit, around this time, Blumenfeld also applied to the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board for his own liquor license, claiming that Live Nation was no longer a tenant and that its license was therefore no longer valid.

According to Live Nation’s lawsuit, the ultimate aim was to effectively force them out of the building so Blumenfeld could “step into a highly profitable going-concern business built and paid-for by Live Nation” and realize a greater share of the venue’s proceeds.

Earlier this year Blumenfeld again attempted to eject the concert promoter, following a dispute over the booking of popular rap artist Rick Ross at another non-Live Nation event scheduled by another promoter. As Ross is a Live Nation client, the company threatened to halt rental payments altogether over the unsanctioned booking.

“In the last one, where Live Nation said this is a huge conflict, I canceled,” Blumenfeld said. “I said, ‘Guys, you can’t do this.’ And whenever they’ve done an event, that’s been a church event, I’ve never made a nickel off of that.”

After the Rick Ross concert was canceled, Live Nation did not pay its rent, due to what the company described in legal filings as a clerical error.

While the company says it is now current on rent, in the interim, Blumenfeld contacted the Sheriff’s Office seeking to evict Live Nation from the building. Since no court order had been issued in the case, the sheriff did not take action.

The legal actions are all still pending.

“It’s unbelievable how far things have gone the wrong way, and to the extent that that’s my fault, I take full ownership of it,” Blumenfeld said. “I was wrong. I shouldn’t have fought with everybody. And listen, life is a marathon. It’s not a 100-yard dash.”

Blumenfeld said he still envisions educational possibilities for his properties — a culinary school at another of his North Broad properties and the Met as a place for those who want to study arts, music, and event planning.

“If you ask ChatGPT, as I have, what would happen to the Met if there is no Live Nation, it spits out charter schools, … internship programs,” Blumenfeld said. “There’s so many ways that the Met could be used in so many creative ways.”