UPDATE: We could have had the opening EC concert at the Arena
l3wis Our first concert at the EC, at $10 a ticket is only expecting about a 3rd of capacity;
Huffman said he expects a crowd of about 4,000.
Makes you wonder how many empty seats will be at the other ‘sold out’ concerts, or if most of those seats have been scooped up by scalpers.
UPDATE:
If I had to make a rough estimate of how many people were at the show last night, I would say between 2,500-3,500. Maybe the EC and SMG will release how many attended. In the AL today they estimated 4-5,000, but didn’t have hard numbers ‘available’. They must have had the Lifelight counters present.
Parking will be an issue for the sold out concerts. Let’s say there was 5,000 people there last night. When we arrived most of the Arena and EC parking lot was full, there were people parked on the street also. We parked in the South Canaries lot which had very few cars in it. For your typical concert that is at that 5,000 range, parking should be fine. But when there is a sold-out show or multiple events, it is going to be a major problem.
The sound was pretty decent for Joan Jett, but not as good for Starship. I was not too impressed by the light show.
As for drink prices they run about $6 for a 16 OZ tap and $6 for a well drink. You are allowed to tip the bar and beertenders, but cash only. If you run your card they do not give you an opportunity to leave a tip on it, and I got the feeling they are not allowed to. So I asked why they could not have a tip jar in view. An SMG employee said this, “We were told by management (SMG) that since it is a city owned facility we are not allowed to put out tip jars.”
I’m just shooting in the wind on this one, but I think that is a complete line of BS from SMG. I can’t imagine a city ordinance existing that prevents ‘tip jars’. Besides, when I have been to concerts at the Pavilion, I have seen tip jars by the bars, and that is a city owned facility.
So what would be the reasoning behind SMG not wanting to encourage tipping their employees? The more money people spend on tips, the less they spend on buying product.
SIDING UPDATE:
I also noticed in the AL today that the siding mockups have not been started. The excuse the city attorney gave; they were working on touch ups to other parts of the building. Then when asked about when they would start the mockups, the city attorney said that Mortenson has up to a year to come up with a solution. In other words, we better get used to the siding we have now, because it will probably never get fixed.
