Live Clear Cultural District not only promises to mark a precedent in the entertainment industry in the country and in Latin America, but also seeks to be an enhancer in Colombia that, although it has an unemployment rate of a single digit, does not hide strong volatility in job stability.
This new scenario, which will have a capacity of up to 40,000 people, will have as its main characteristic its modular technology, which will allow the disassembly of the stands according to the type of event, because in addition to concerts, it will also be available for gastronomic and cultural events.
(Further: This is the new multipurpose scenario that Bogotá will have).
That and more told Portafolio Luz Angela Castro, CEO of Ocesa Colombia, one of the companies behind this ambitious space, who, in addition to talking about the opportunities that this infrastructure project in the geographical heart of Bogotá will offer the country’s entertainment industry, also stressed that this project can benefit more than 25,000 people in employment.
What is life of course?
We could say that it is a cultural district that integrates the recovery of different green areas that previously had no use because they did not have the conditions to receive public. There one might think of having gastronomic fairs, family meetings or picnics and all that type of recovery of green areas. They are 180,000 square meters.
We have temporary structures. There we have an area of stands, which will allow the development of concerts, mainly musical events, and there may be other types of activities.
(You can read: This is the Live Claro, New Bogota stage and where artists like Shakira will be).
But it is really planned to develop in a complementary way for everything that already exists in Bogotá and in the country. It is also projected to honor what the entertainment line means in Colombia, although we are not even close to the ceiling.
I think that our country’s potential is quite relevant because, in addition, it is an economic line that is not finite. That is what I mean is that the economy of our country was now based on the ‘commodities’.
But today we can say that the entertainment industry and this whole issue of cultural movement, including musical productions, digital content, has an important dynamization factor, but is also based on something inexhaustible that is human talent.
Live Claro Bogotá
Néstor Gómez / Portafolio
When will it be ready? When will we see the first concert? When will it open?
This is a kind of Central Park, that is, a center that will have more than 9,000 tree individuals. That, through temporal structures, the two versions of Cirque du Soleil have been made, now with Jurassic World that goes to August seventeen; And we have had some concerts of a small size.
On July 27 there will be a private concert for Claro users, where Jessi Uribe, Paola Jara, Alkilados will be; And then we will have a series of events that are already confirmed and whose ticket offices are already exhausted, among which are Green Day, Shakira, Imagine Dragons, Guns N ‘Roses. My Chemical Romance, Kendrick Lamar and Blessed.
It is a place that blooms to create alternatives and Bogotá is a city that deserves much more infrastructure than it has. We need to applaud and embrace the possibilities that the new technology provides to have products or resources ready to program, increase the entertainment offer and enrich the cultural offer of Bogotá, Colombia and the world.
What was in that lot? When you find it, did you see the opportunity to make a megacenter of entertainment there?
It was a totally abandoned 24 -hectare lot, where police horses were graduated, which belonged to the Government and Charity of Cundinamarca and that, by the Territorial Planning Plan, which is what governs the use of soils and commercial exploitation, among other considerations, we place it to be able to do the first Du Soleil Cirque after Pandemia.
In addition, we did not have an alternative that met the specifications that the people of the Cirque asked us: that it was central, that had mass transport, that had an accessible parking area and that had visibility by main roads. It was a surprise that we found this lot.
(We recommend: Shakira will return to Colombia: he announced concerts in Cali and Bogotá).
We notice that this lot, after an entire technical analysis, both legal and topographs and soil analysis, plus the entire integral component of what should be considered to make a project viable, was of a contemplative nature, but that, according to the POT and the different characteristics, allowed the seventy -five percent of the land to be adapted to be green. The land was used for grazing for fifty years, had no native species, and we are in that process of recovering it completely.
The fact that many areas are seen black means that all the lifting of the plant layer was made to be able to make drainage systems, incorporation of water repositories, which are called fondages, in order to make efficient use of water and temporal structures.
Thus this space was born: with the temporal use of 75% of green terrain, 25% of temporary structures and for the development of cultural, entertainment and gastronomic activities through the use of temporal structures, as POT explicitly says.
Live Claro Bogotá
Néstor Gómez / Portafolio
What are the goals that have in the long term on the subject of sustainability?
I believe that any company that develops an activity today must think about how to handle the externalities that it generates in all aspects, such as waste management, the incorporation of correct practices, or educational. For example, when we go to concerts, to festivals, it is important that we make a correct use of these spaces and even that we are responsible with others.
We have developed a noise management plan by the hand of both national and international experts, which allows us Special, a control of sound consoles with maximum stops and also limitations against the theme of pyrotechnics.
There is a clear responsibility in all these aspects and there are companies with an important expertise that accompany us. We have the accompaniment of international conservation and the EAN University with its rector, Brigitte Baptiste, as agents that accompany us in this whole process. We are also working to support the development of urban gardens, and the issue of employability, which is more than valuable.
It is a project that, I think, closes in a beautiful way, because not only means to be able to do concerts or entertainment events, but also to give added value to the city, recover an area that did not have any type of security or enclosures and, through a permanent dialogue with the communities, also find a way to incorporate in the plans the concerns that they legitimately have and how we become a space of valorization, of generation of economic development, of economic development and for the city, but also for the adjoining community.
What are the calculations of the economic spill that can be given to the city?
If we speak directly of the direct, indirect and induced jobs, for the next events we are talking about that approximately twenty -five thousand jobs are, we are talking that the direct ones are practically between 1,200 and 1,500, depending on the dimension of the event.
We also have a line of use and impulse of entrepreneurship, so there are commercial samples that allow the approximation and spaces for integration and through work with the Mayor’s Office of Bogotá, we are incorporating in a regular and orderly way the entire issue of supply of street vendors and increasing those safety standards and what we want to do is a reference of how we raise the level. That was a very important value that Ocaesa achieved when he joined in Colombia in 2010 and we uploaded the standards.
(Besides: My Chemical Romance comes to Bogotá: ticket offices).
Today we have the third company in the world that is partner of the first, which is Ignation, which has 51% of the company’s shareholding. And that meant a transfer of knowledge in all technical issues, thus managing to regularize and professionalize different trades related to entertainment.
Billboard, since 2023, has said that Colombia is the Latin American country with the highest growth of international concerts. We can also say that national talent is flooding the world with varied talent.
We are very happy, because we are talking about this industry generating 300,000 jobs, according to the quantification figures of the Ministry of Labor, we have a consumer that feels joy and happiness when it goes to this type of space and that is an added value that not necessarily all economic sectors have.
The entertainment industry sees clearly as an important management manager of the entertainment offer. Believing in this country is not only an investor trusted signal, but also has to do with the potential that our country has for entertainment growth, dynamizer of related industries such as tourism, commerce, transport.
Luz Ángela Castro, CEO of OCESA
Andrea Moreno / Portafolio
What is that differential value that has clearly lives in front of other entertainment spaces?
Live Clear Cultural District is a multipurpose space that, through the use of temporary and modular structures, can be adapted to the needs to be made to make different types of events.
This is also accompanied with a whole sustainability plan and an environmental recovery plan. That means that, in some way, what we are doing is diversifying the offer, giving added value in environmental issues, contributing to this place to meet an environmental missionary, but, additionally, that it is adaptable to the different types of shows.
We had the Cirque du Soleil, we had gastronomic events, we had events for children, we had Jurassic World and we have the concerts where the stalls or stands can be used. It is a very efficient way that is a reference for Latin America and even for the world.
While we are inspired by the development of this project, in Adele’s concerts in the residence in Munich, incorporating this type of technology, this is an important impulse for more foreigners to come to our country and that Bogotá is ratified as a city of entertainment and music.
Javier Acosta
Juan Martín Murillo Herrera
Portfolio
