The Red Sox could start construction this fall on a new concert venue alongside Fenway Park, after the project won a key city approval Thursday.
The Boston Planning & Development Agency signed off Fenway Sports Group’s plans for a 5,400-seat music hall on the site of a parking garage and a triangular patch of land between Lansdowne and Ipswich streets on the east side of the ballpark. It would be a joint venture with concert promoters Live Nation, and one of several music venues planned to open in the city in the next few years.
Red Sox officials have said the music hall, to be called Fenway Theater, would be a way to keep Fenway Park busy during the offseason and enable the team to build two floors of new event space and amenities behind the bleachers inside the stadium itself.
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The Red Sox have also agreed to donate $500,000 to the nearby Boston Arts Academy, $200,000 to local parks, and to fund studies of potential transportation improvements in the area.
Construction of the hall is expected to take about two years.
(Red Sox principal owner John Henry also owns the Globe.)
Tim Logan can be reached at tim.logan@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @bytimlogan.