GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — Tonight, the creative team behind the multi-million-dollar construction project at 975 Ottawa Avenue, known as SILVA, hosted a variety show at Wealthy Theatre.
The founder of SILVA said tonight was their coming out party and they were almost sold out.
"We have burlesque dancing, we have hip hop dancing, we have singing, we have a Mae West trivia, we have a yo-yo champion. We have some sketch comedy. We have a stand-up comedian. We have 14 acts and total," said founder of SILVA, Mark Secchia.
To show the community what to expect, SILVA hosted a variety show at Wealthy Theatre Thursday night where multiple acts took the stage. This all came after the pre-show entertainment which started when doors opened at six o'clock. Secchia, said the inspiration behind SILVA was to recreate enthusiasm for people to go downtown.
"We're opening a concept downtown, where we hope to kind of recreate a little bit of that enthusiasm that used to be downtown with the old brands that everyone knows and loves. But unfortunately, they're all kind of gone now. And it's pretty much a regular environment. And we want to bring back a little bit of the nuttiness that downtown used to have. So we went into the community tried to find some acts that we could bring on board when we open. And we found so much neat stuff out there," said Secchia.
13 ON YOUR SIDE's very own Jay Plyburn was one of the performing acts for the Variety Show. There was also a magician interacting with guests in the lobby who pick-pocketed them as part of the show! SILVA performers said this variety show is allowing the public to get a a taste of all SILVA has to offer.
"I hope the viewers get a taste of the dynamic entertainment that's going to be featured at the upcoming silver Silvers that's opening up next year," said musician performer, Kevin Cavanaugh
The first phase of SILVA is expected to be complete by February 2025. Secchia hopes SILVA becomes a smaller version of DeVos Place in downtown Grand Rapids. He said there were three reasons behind tonight's performance.
"Number one, it was just to find the acts that are out there. Number two, it was to show the community the tone that we want to set. But also number three, we're gonna need to hire over 200 staff when we launch and not being out there in the community for with a new concept, how would they be able to see who we are? And do they want to work for us? So we hope that when we do start doing hiring people can go online, do a little bit of the Google Google and kind of see what we've been doing," said Secchia.
The founder says SILVA will open in phases, beginning with a restaurant and bar, followed by indoor bar courts, and eventually an event space.
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