ELIZABETHTOWN, Ky. (WDRB) -- Elizabethtown is moving ahead with plans for a $40 million outdoor music venue -- a project city leaders are calling a bold investment in the community’s future.

Around 80% of the project will be funded by tourism dollars through the city’s restaurant and transient room taxes. The city itself is committing $9 million from its general fund, to be paid in $1 million installments over the next nine years.

"A lot of people say 'you're spending money,' but we're not," said Elizabethtown Mayor Jeff Gregory. "We're investing in our community, we're investing in our people, and we're investing in our businesses."

The new venue, which recently broke ground on a previously privately owned property at Buffalo Lake, will hold 10,000 people — with 4,000 fixed seats and 6,000 on the lawn — and is designed to catch artists traveling between major cities like Nashville, Louisville, Indianapolis and Chicago.

Beyond concerts, the venue will serve as a multi-use space, offering a variety of seasonal and community events.

"We tried to fit the market in between what you're seeing in great big cities, which a lot of times are 15-20,000 seat amphitheaters," Gregory said, adding that industry professionals were consulted in the planning phase of the project. "We want to be big enough that we can attract just about any artist here to play. And so that's that's where we came up with the size of 10,000 seats."

There are some who are skeptical of the project. Some residents who hike public trails around the Buffalo Lake area are upset that some of those trails, and around 250 trees, were removed for construction.

However, the city confirmed that many of the trails won't be touched and around 500 new trees will be planted in the area.

"What we want you to feel when you get here is you walk in through the gates, and then you're in the woods," Gregory said. "This was all going to be commercial property, so we were glad to be able to get 40 to 50 acres to put this venue on it and save some of that for a park- like setting."

Construction will take more than a year. Right now, dirt is being turned at the property to prepare for the next phase of building that's expected to start soon.

Wait and Joanna Baker, who live on Sutton Lane closest to the project, have a front row seat to the venue project.

"It's home to us. We love it here," Joanna said watching construction from her front porch Tuesday. "Our neighbors are not happy. They bought their places  for the same reason as us. It was secluded and private. You're in the city, but yet not in the city. Everybody else we talk to seems like they're for it."

The Bakers are skeptical, but hopeful the music venue is a good thing for Elizabethtown. Either way, after 37 years in their home, they say they're not leaving.

"If the amphitheater wasn't here, we'd have houses or apartments," Joanna said. "So, we're weighing the odds."

Construction is expected to finish up in the fall of 2026.

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