Congratulations to our dear client ArtsQuest on the fifth anniversary of SteelStacks, the South Bethlehem arts complex that has truly changed our community for the better.
Concannon Miller has been a proud supporter of SteelStacks since it opened, including being the first company to hold an event there, its annual After Tax Season party on April 15, 2011.
Concannon Miller also contributed to the capital campaign for the ArtsQuest Center at SteelStacks and is serving as the presenting sponsor for RiverJazz at SteelStacks for the sixth year running.
“SteelStacks is a phenomenal community asset,” Concannon Miller CEO Bob Oster says. “The complex has made Bethlehem the festival king in the Northeast, if not the United States.”
Situated on the former Bethlehem Steel Corp. site, SteelStacks’ annual lineup includes a dozen music and arts festivals, three indoor and outdoor stages and more than 800 concerts, 2,000 cinema screenings and 250 comedy shows. Annual attendance tops 800,000 people.
“The ArtsQuest Center and our SteelStacks programming have an annual economic impact of more than $48 million,” ArtsQuest President and CEO Kassie Hilgert says in a press release.
“But the real story is not the numbers, as impressive as they are,” she says. “The real story is how the public sector, the private sector and the entire community came together to create an arts and cultural district that is truly unique and literally couldn’t have been built anywhere else because no other place has our community’s legacy of innovation, our community’s unique physical assets and our community’s rich history of arts and cultural activities.”
Concannon Miller was moved to be part of the private sector that helped create SteelStacks because of its longstanding commitment to the community, Oster says. Giving back to the community is explicitly spelled out in Concannon Miller’s strategic plan, and the company has supported ArtsQuest since the inaugural Musikfest in 1984, making it one of the few Lehigh Valley companies to support the organization since its inception.
Oster also notes that the opening of the SteelStacks complex is surely a leading factor in Bethlehem’s regular inclusion on top places to live lists.
“SteelStacks has had a real positive impact on the region’s livability,” Oster says.
Photo caption: Fireworks at the Levitt Pavilion at SteelStacks. Photo taken by Jonathan Davies, photo provided by ArtsQuest.
