"I think it's going to blow people's minds," said Chuck Morris, president of AEG Live Rocky Mountain Region, which booked the show. "The farthest seat away is closer than the low deck at Invesco Field. It's unbelievably intimate - a boutique stadium, even though that sounds like an oxymoron.
" Intimate, maybe, but this is a large-scale operation. Seating on the soccer field will increase the venue's capacity to 22,000. The normal 86 "point of sale" vendors will more than double to 200 for the Chesney show.
Parking spaces will double from 4,000 to 8,000. Additional ATMs, trash cans, police officers and medics will help ease the crush of humanity. "I can hit 90 percent of my ticket buyers via e-mail with parking information two days before the show that says how to get there, and alternative routes other than the main Quebec thoroughfare," said Jolette.
That could help avoid the traffic problems that plagued the Bonnie Raitt show at the Broomfield Event Center in November, in which some waited more than an hour to park and others didn't even try. Jolette knows from experience that it helps to plan with an eye toward microscopic details. The Pepsi Center opened in 1999 with a Celine Dion show, which went well except for a failure to coordinate lighting.
When the house lights went down for the concert, the luxury suite lights remained as bright as ever. "They didn't tie any of them into the house computer so they were all on individual dimmers," he remembered. "All of a sudden we have staff screwing around in each suite trying to turn them off.
" Jolette wants to make sure that doesn't happen again. He has conducted four lighting tests and weeks of research in advance of Saturday's concert, even traveling to see a Chesney show at Pizza Hut Park in Frisco, Texas. That allowed Jolette to meet with Chesney's production team and show them blueprints of Dick's.
"Pizza Hut Park is almost identical to our facility, and the sound played great," he said. "It doesn't bounce off different things. It's more like an outdoor amphitheater.
" AEG's Morris agreed that Dick's Sporting Goods Park has better potential than many venues for crystalline sound quality. "I feel very confident people are going to walk out with one of the best experiences in an outdoor stadium ever," he said. "It was obviously built for soccer, but it was also built for music.
" Dick's Sporting Goods Park, which bills itself as the largest professional soccer stadium and complex in the world, certainly has size on its side: 4.4 million pounds of structural steel, 16,000 square feet of glass, 24 lighted playing fields surrounding the stadium. But all that won't matter if the first concert disappoints.
Jolette is leaving nothing to chance. "You really have to think of every single aspect - what's on my digital fascia board, what's on the TVs on the concourse, parking operations, beer and food consumption, security," he said, then added, "I think we're in really good shape." can be reached at 303-954-1642 or jwenzel@denverpost.
com. "I think it's going to blow people's minds," said Chuck Morris, president of AEG Live Rocky Mountain Region, which booked the show.
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