UPDATE Aug. 21, 2:47 p.m.:
Last night’s B.o.B. concert had plenty of room for every AU community member who wanted to attend, according to SUB director Greg Cornell.
Many of the people waiting in line before the concert did not have AU IDs and did not go to AU, Cornell said, so once they were turned away, the total number of people entering the concert decreased.
“It wasn’t as overcrowded as I had expected, based on the Facebook number,” Cornell said. “It turned out being quite perfect with numbers.”
“B.o.B. put on an incredible performance,” Cornell said. “Everyone who was there had a wonderful time. It was incredible.”
Original story:
The Student Union Board’s B.o.B. concert tonight may not have room for all of the people planning to attend the event, and some may have to be turned away, according to Greg Cornell, the SUB director.
The concert will be located in the Tavern, which can only hold up to 500 to 600 people, Cornell said. By press time, the Facebook event for the concert listed 1,611 attending guests and 366 who were maybe attending.
“I think there’s a definite chance that we are going to have to turn people down from attending the concert,” Cornell said.
Originally, Cornell wanted to host the concert in the Woods-Brown Amphitheatre, which can hold around 800 people, he said. But early in the process of planning, Cornell said AU faculty and staff actively discouraged him from holding the show outside because they wanted to avoid complaints from the neighbors.
Last year during the all-day, outdoor A-tech Fest concert, several noise complaints were filed with Public Safety from neighborhood residents, according to Clay Pencek, a senior in the School of International Service and last year’s SUB director.
“I think we should respect the community to an extent, but they also live near a college, and they need to understand that maybe once a semester something [will happen] outside,” Pencek said.
When he put on shows last year, Pencek would expect half of the number of attending guests listed on the Facebook events to actually come.
“Cutting that number in half, you’re still well over capacity for [the B.o.B. concert],” Pencek said. “I believe it will draw more than 500 people.”
Jarrod MacNeil, the faculty advisor for SUB, said problems with the possibility of a cancellation due to inclement weather would outweigh the benefit of being able to fit more students in the outdoor amphitheater. Concerns from the neighbors also caused community members of AU to urge SUB to hold the concert indoors.
“We are part of a community in the area,” MacNeil said. “We want to maintain good community relations. AU operates under a strong mantra of civility, and that’s not only to our immediate community members, but that’s also to the community at large.”
Many students, faculty, staff and administrators have weighed into the conversation about the location of the concert at some point, according to MacNeil, and community approval of the Campus Plan was among the concerns of these individuals.
“I would hope that everyone involved in the conversation, including students, would be looking out for the overall Campus Plan,” MacNeil said.
Cornell also considered Bender Arena for the B.o.B. concert, which holds a maximum of 5,000 people. However, he was not sure he could fill that much space solely with students, and he had concerns about the price of renting space in Bender.
“Bender is expensive for me to put a concert in,” Cornell said. “I was working with budgetary restrictions for the whole year and with not wanting to open [B.o.B.] up to the public. I wanted the Welcome Week concert to be very much ‘our’ concert. This is for AU students. I didn’t want to have to charge anyone for it.”
SUB can rent space in the amphitheater and the Tavern at no cost outside of contracting lights and sound. Now that it is located in the Tavern, admittance is free for anyone with an AU ID.
Cornell said the amphitheater could have been a great venue and the right size for the number of people showing interest in attending.
However, the timing of the show may keep crowd numbers down, Pencek said. The Facebook event lists the concert time as 10:00 p.m. to 1:00 a.m.
“That’s competing with a lot of other Welcome Week activities,” Pencek said.
mfowler@theeagleonline.com
