Notes Live is projecting to break ground later this year and to unveil the finished product in time for the 2026 concert touring season. The venue is to be built just northeast of U.S. 75 and State Highway 121. Modeled after the company’s Colorado Springs amphitheater, the McKinney location will be built over 46 acres and have more than 250 luxury fire pit suites, custom-built owners club suites, traditional reserved seating and a landscaped grass berm. The amphitheater will be built so “every seat will be comfortable with a direct sightline to the stage.” It will serve not-so-typical “gourmet” concert fare and plans to offer “breathtaking” views of Texas sunsets over the stage.
“We chose the Dallas-Fort Worth area right out of the gate when we started our business, and it has been a number one priority for us for our for our biggest amphitheater," Notes Live CEO JW Roth says. "At the end of the day, it only took one meeting with with [Mayor George Fuller] and all the folks at McKinney to realize that this was the perfect location for us. They are visionaries, they saw right off the bat what this concept could do, and so we landed on McKinney for that reason."
McKinney Makes Noise in the Music Scene
Dallas’ live music scene has already steadily taken over the city’s suburbs as North Texas continues to bring in billions of dollars in tourism revenue. McKinney has made its mark in the music scene as the host of this year’s 28th annual Texas Music Revolution, which will include more than 90 country performers. Mayor Fuller considers the Sunset Amphitheater to be a “game changer” for the suburb’s entertainment and economic growth. "We've put a lot of effort into creating that identity for our city," Fuller says. "We've pursued being recognized in the state as a cultural arts district and as a music friendly city by the governor, a designation shared by only a few cities in the state. ... It's been a concerted effort, a very intentional effort to develop the city as an arts community. So this fits with exactly what our vision is from the beginning."
The venue is set to bring more than live music performances closer to the McKinney community. The development of the Sunset Amphitheater is projected to support more than 1,300 jobs and generate over $3 billion of regional and local economic activity within its first decade of operation.
"Though there's significant jobs and whatnot that are created when you have a venue like this on-site, there's also all of the off-site collateral benefit that happens and all the other businesses that are supported," Fuller says. "Think about hotels and restaurants and just other businesses in the surrounding community that benefit and when you have something like this that's bringing all these people into the community. It's going to have a huge economic impact on us in many, many different ways."
Roth says there is still development work to do, but the company pushing hard to meet its goal of building by the end of this year. With the current timeline, Roth hopes to be booking shows by late 2025 for the 2026 season.
The Dallas-Fort Worth area is known for its many entertainment venues, especially AT&T Stadium and American Airlines Center. However, Fuller says when people talk about concerts and music events in Dallas, many of them are not designed to be music venues, but are rather repurposed sports venues. With Sunset Amphitheatre in McKinney, Fuller believes DFW will have access to a venue built with music fans' needs in mind.
"Our city will be home to a world-class facility built specifically for what concerts and music performances demand," Fuller says. "This is a world-class facility, so you're not you're not going to AT&T Stadium and listening to your concert bouncing off 50 concrete walls. That says something, says that this was designed for the music experience, for the listener that comes for a completely heightened experience."
The McKinney Sunset Amphitheatre marks the fourth announcement of a new Notes Live music and entertainment venue in the last 12 months. One of the company's latest amphitheater projects, the Sunset Amphitheatre in Colorado Springs, began construction in March 2023 and is scheduled to hold its grand opening in August.
