ONE Spokane Stadium reflects on first concert, looks ahead to more nonsporting events

ONE Spokane Stadium’s relatively new layer of turf has been home to high school football and Spokane Velocity soccer games, but on the morning before the stadium’s inaugural concert ( last week’s Outlaw Music Festival, featuring legends John Mellencamp, Bob Dylan and Willie Nelson), Matt Meyer was standing on a new layer of Terraplas ahead of one of the largest stages in the country.

Meyer, ONE’s director of entertainment, was there to represent the team that spent a number of years curating and planning events for the venue, such as Friday’s festival, which also featured up-and-coming music artist Brittney Spencer.

“It was one of those things where once it popped up in my inbox, it was ‘How can we make this work, what are the dates, and how are we going to fit this into scheduling and everything?’ because this is something we didn’t want to miss out on,” Meyer said. “Hopefully it starts that domino effect moving forward in the future knowing that our first show are these three icons that are on stage; that should propel us moving forward.”

The stadium operates through a partnership between the Spokane Public Facilities District and Spokane Public Schools, normally hosting a few thousand people at a time. For Outlaw, it more than doubled those numbers, with about 10,000 people in attendance.

The turf was covered by a large layer of Terraplas, a temporary flooring material designed for this type of material protection, and a sea of fold-out chairs. A SAM575, one of the largest mobile stages in the country, was rented for the show. Meyer said a similar stage had been purchased by the stadium for the concert, but it didn’t arrive in time. It will be used for other nonsports events going forward.

“This is the first time, right? So we know that there’s going to be mistakes, we’re going to learn from this event, and we’re going to make everything better going forward,” Meyer said Thursday morning, in advance of the music festival.

The next entertainment-based event to be held at the stadium is the Great Outdoors Comedy Festival taking place Aug. 23-25. It will feature comics such as Kevin Hart, Shane Gillis and Tom Segura .

While some of the setup for Outlaw prepared ONE for the comedy festival, there will be a few differences. . The stage will face the larger west grandstands instead of a mass of foldable chairs to the south for “a more intimate” show, as well as a handful of catered VIP tables.

The stadium has faced some controversy from the citizens of Spokane, who chose in an advisory vote to keep and reconstruct Joe Albi Stadium, some questioning what benefits ONE could bring to the table. Meyer believes he has (at least a few of) those answers.

Meyer believes the venue has heavy potential to attract larger acts than those booking venues, including the U.S. Pavilion and even the Spokane Arena. The Arena can hold about 12,000 people. Certain events, such as the Outlaw Music Festival, are close to that size, but ONE has the maximum capacity of around 15,000 people.

“It’s bringing us into a new realm of artists that we’ve never been able to have in Spokane before,” Meyer said.

Meyer and his team also conducted research based on data from ticket sales and were “able to find that about 30-35% of the ticket sales from all of these major shows were coming in from outside the greater Spokane area,” Meyer said. “That means people are staying in hotels, eating at restaurants, going out to bars and just bringing in a lot of extra money for the economy.”

Spokane hasn’t had much music festival history, at least not on the same scale as those within relative proximity, such as the Gorge Amphitheatre. And while Meyer understands that the stadium can’t compete with the true size and capacity of massive stadiums that host “the Taylor Swift’s of the world,” he believes it has every opportunity to act as more of a large amphitheater that can “complement” venues such as the Gorge and host similar events featuring multiple acts.

“It’s been a fun process,” Meyer said.