Mac Rating: 5.00 | Votes: 1 | Date: 03/07/2026 02:04:00

Oklahoma City built the missing rung of its music ladder in twelve months flat. The Criterion at 500 East Sheridan Avenue in Bricktown opened on March 26, 2016, with Tulsa-raised songwriter Ben Rector playing to a packed house - the culmination of a four-year push by Alliance Investments and Levelland Productions to give the city a mid-sized hall. The gap it filled was structural: before 2016, acts drawing 2,000 to 3,500 fans had almost nowhere to play in Oklahoma City, and many tours simply routed past to Tulsa or Dallas; the Criterion's 39,000 square feet slotted precisely between the clubs and the arena. The room holds roughly 3,500 to 4,000 depending on configuration, with a second-level mezzanine that alone accommodates up to 1,300, three full-service bars, an atrium glass curtain wall and production-grade lighting and sound. The project was a Bricktown redevelopment play as much as a music one - designed by Bucher Design Studio, built by Hill Commercial Construction, financed with local banks and city tax-increment support for the streetscape - and its opening catalysed further development in East Bricktown. The first-year calendar set the register: Third Eye Blind, My Morning Jacket, Deftones and Rick Springfield inside the opening months, and the booking has since broadened through a Live Nation partnership that keeps national rock, hip-hop, country and comedy tours on the schedule. A decade in, the venue functions as intended - the room that keeps Oklahoma City on tour itineraries between club and arena scale, an anchor of the Bricktown entertainment district a few blocks from the ballpark and the canal. The design pays attention to sightlines in a way flat-floor warehouses rarely do - the mezzanine wraps the room and the floor rakes gently toward the stage - and the Bricktown address puts the venue within walking distance of the canal, the ballpark and the hotel stock that makes an out-of-town show night practical.