Mayor Don Mason Speaks on City’s Summer Concert Series Success

DOWNTOWN ZANESVILLE, Ohio- If you thought there were a lot of concerts happening in downtown Zanesville this summer, it wasn’t just your perception. Downtown Zanesville, whether it be at the Secrest Auditorium or Zane’s Landing was host to a multitude of concerts.

So far, just the Summer Concert Series alone put on by the City of Zanesville at the Secrest Auditorium brought in about 7,000 people to the downtown area.

“The city of Zanesville had four concerts as part of our summer concert series which were all very successful in terms of creating interest in the downtown, and actually brought people into the downtown to eat,” Don Mason, mayor of Zanesville stated.

Mayor Don Mason claimed that historically people in southeastern Ohio have to drive far for big-city entertainment. Hosting these events in downtown Zanesville not only brought our community together, but brought our neighbors closer. The mayor said they like to check the parking lots for where each license plate is from and they noticed a promising trend. 

“We’ve noticed a lot of people were out of county. And that’s what we want to see. We want to see people come here for entertainment. Now, one of the reasons we did this is we want people to start thinking of the Secrest Auditorium and Music Hall in a broader sense,” Mayor Mason said.

Preparations for the 2022 Summer Concert Series is already underway, and the city hopes to continue the momentum and host events at the Secrest Auditorium into the fall and winter. In the meantime, while this summer’s concert series is over, the Secrest Auditorium will be hosting the Rhythm and Blues Festival from 2PM-10PM on Saturday, September 4th on Labor Day weekend.