36 hours that would change live events forever…

Wednesday, March 11, 2020

Initially, this Wednesday did not seem much different from any prior. We had just come off a four-day run of basketball the previous weekend when we hosted the Ohio Valley Conference basketball tournament at the Ford Center. Belmont won the men’s championship in a thrilling, down to the wire battle with Murray State, and were the first team to punch their ticket to March Madness, which would ultimately be cancelled. Southeast Missouri won the women’s championship over UT Martin and would also soon find their season come to a screeching halt. The 14 basketball games we hosted that previous weekend had gone off without much of a hitch. We had also managed to set a new food and beverage sales record at the Victory Theatre that prior Saturday night during the Hairball concert.

On tap for the coming week was a sold-out Lauren Diagle concert on Friday, March 13 at the Ford Center, followed by well attended home hockey games for the Thunderbolts on both Saturday and Sunday.

The weekly staff meeting had been a staple of the Ford Center since it opened in the fall of 2011. Every Wednesday, with very few exceptions, the full-time management staff would gather at 9:00am for a weekly meeting. The location of the meeting would change from time to time, but the day and time were set. The meeting was held in either the Hospitality Room, the Corner Club, or up in the Suite Club on the third floor of the Ford Center, and all full-time managers were required to attend. Some weeks the meetings were as short as 5 minutes. Some weeks the meetings would drag on and on, lasting an hour or even more. Most of the time though, they would fall into the twenty to thirty-minute range, and this one was no different in that regard.

The format of every meeting was identical. The highest-ranking building director present, usually the associate director of operations, would greet the full-time managers with a “Howdy”, or a “How’s everyone today”, and everyone would moan a halfhearted response while sipping on the Starbucks coffee they had picked up from the DoubleTree Hotel across the street on their way into work, or munching on their breakfast they had not yet finished. Meetings started on time, but rarely was everyone present for the start. Many of us work late nights, so being in the building, let alone making it to the meeting at 9:00am sharp, was easier said than done.

We would always start by recapping events we had hosted over the previous seven days since our last meeting and note any issues that might have popped up during those events to correct moving forward. We would then transition into reviewing details for events planned during the next seven days to make sure everyone knew what to expect. Expected attendance numbers, special security measures, door times, event itineraries, any special meet and greets or promotional giveaways, parking plans, etc. You name it, we covered it. We then went around the room and asked each manager if they had any individual notes or comments to share with the group before we adjourned. You could almost predict what each person would say each week based upon the event schedule. Noteworthy surprises were few and far between.

During the previous Wednesday’s meeting that was held in the Suite Club prior to the Ohio Valley Conference Basketball Tournament, there was one surprise. Our executive director announced that we would be adding additional hand sanitizer pumps around the arena concourse to show the public that we were taking the new coronavirus serious. At that point, there were only 161 confirmed cases of the new novel coronavirus in the US, most of which were in Seattle. I had watched some of the news in the previous weeks, and I knew a new virus existed, but I did not think much of it. Sure, we had basketball teams and fans from 12 colleges descending on the Ford Center for that first weekend of March, but all the teams were regional, and, as far as we knew, none of them were coming from what would later be termed “hot spots”. The announcement that we were adding more sanitizer stations than we normally had available seemed like overkill to me.

In the roughly eight and half years that I had worked at the Ford Center, I could count on one hand the number of events that had been cancelled. Cancellations just did not happen. When it came time for our executive director to share any notes he had for the staff during our events meeting in the Hospitality Room that Wednesday, March 11, his focus was all on the virus. Many of us sat there in silence as he said he wanted us to step up our game, and to make sure that the public saw our staff actively wiping down high contact surfaces on a regular basis. He said he wanted housekeeping visible. He wanted us to reemphasize handwashing with our staff and the importance of changing gloves regularly. He said that we were not going to be going around and sanitizing every chairback in the arena bowl right now, but that it may eventually come to that. Reba McEntire was scheduled to perform a concert at the Ford Center a week and a half later, and there was some concern that she might postpone her concert due to the coronavirus. The financial impact of a postponement or cancellation seemed to make it unlikely, as it would likely be a seven-figure hit in ticket sales alone. I think we all left that meeting wondering if we should be taking the virus more seriously than we had been. Like most of the general public, we were just starting to understand this was not like other viruses we had seen before.

After the meeting, my focus was quickly drawn back to the task at hand, which was getting deliveries checked in and giving my warehouse staff the information they needed to get product stocked in our concession stands and bars for the Lauren Diagle concert that was scheduled for that Friday. At that moment, we had roughly 62 hours until doors opened for a sold-out concert, and we were not yet ready. My delivery from our primary food supplier was being brought down to the kitchen on pallets. The nearly 150 cases would need checked in, sorted, and put away. Our delivery from our secondary beer supplier was due in, as was a large paper order from our paper products company.

After our food supplier order was checked in, and while my warehouse staff was putting the product away in the kitchen refrigerators, freezers, and dry storage areas, I snuck into my office for a few minutes to check some emails. One of the non-profit groups that had worked the OVC championship game in one of our concession stands had emailed me asking how many draft beers they had sold. I looked up the number and emailed back “257”. I did not write out a sentence, I did not offer any additional banter. The email contained the number, and that was it. For anyone who has ever received an email from me, a short, concise, to the point response is not something I am normally capable of. I like to write long, elaborate, detailed responses, so the very short, to the point response indicates that I did not have a lot of free time that morning and had other things on my mind. I emailed our paper supplier account representative asking about getting more hand sanitizer pumps ordered for use at our portable bars and concessions, anticipating we would need more than we already had. They responded back that they were out of the two different types of hand sanitizer I had inquired about and that it was on back order. I asked if I could order 1 case of each to hedge my bets, hoping one would come in sooner rather than later. I also managed to send off an email to our executive assistant asking her to order some supplies for our cash room. The cash room staff had been hounding me to order the supplies for several days, and I needed to get that one checked off my to-do list.

I took a few minutes to review my inventory, and did some math on how much beer I thought we could sell over the upcoming weekend, and sent a quick text to my primary beer supplier account representative asking if he could drop by yet that day to place a small order for delivery the following day. Lauren Diagle had played Shreveport the prior weekend and we had received a tip that their building did $60,000 in beer sales for a crowd of about 11,500. We were sitting on a fair amount of beer in the building already, but I wanted to get another order in to top it off. We had used a little more beer than I expected the previous weekend between the basketball tournament and the record sales for Hairball at the Victory and I did not want to cut it close on our beer inventory. He said he would be by later in the day.

Our HR manager had been helping me recruit and schedule non-profit groups to work our concession stands and ID check stations for some of our bigger events, and she asked me if I had an updated list of which groups were scheduled for which events. She was interested in the upcoming the Luke Bryan concert date, and if there were openings, she had a group that was interested in working that event. I located my list and sent it to her. It was a busy morning in my office, but not one unlike many others.

At noon, I had a meeting with one of our liquor account representatives regarding their annual product activation surrounding the Guns & Hoses charity boxing event scheduled for April. We discussed product sampling in the Corner Club during the first hour when only the bar is open, and then shifting the promo girls and product sampling up to the third floor for suite holders when the entire building opens for the suite holders to be able to enjoy before the event began. We commented to each other how weird things were starting to get in the news, and after our meeting, I jokingly commented that everything seemed good to go, assuming events did not get cancelled because of the virus.

Our primary beer supplier account representative popped into my office shortly after my meeting with the liquor representative and we walked the building for me to show him exactly what beer inventory I had on hand, and we put together an order scheduled for delivery for the following day to top us off and make sure we would be good to go for the weekend.

We had cable news on the television in our office all day, and it was beginning to sink in that the virus was going to be a big deal. I decided I needed to send a reminder to all my staff, non-profit groups, third party vendors, etc, reminding them of the importance of practicing good hygiene, and assure them that other than an increased emphasis on sanitization, we were still business as usual.

Wednesday, March 11, 2020 – 2:18pm

Hi Everyone,

I wanted to take a moment to remind everyone again of the importance of practicing good hygiene and reporting illnesses.

PLEASE…wash your hands regularly. Washing hands regularly with soap and water for at least 20 seconds is the best defense against disease. Hands should be washed when you first report to your concession stand or bar, and again multiple times throughout your shift. Don’t assume that since you’re wearing gloves you don’t have to wash your hands.

If you are experiencing symptoms of illness, you MUST report those to management, and if you are experiencing an illness, you CANNOT work. VenuWorks is committed to ensuring the health, safety and well-being of our employees and customers and complying with all health department regulations. If you come to work sick, you WILL be sent home, so please just stay home if you are ill. You’re not doing anyone any favors by showing up sick and you risk spreading illness to others. You MUST be symptom free for at least 24 hours after an illness before returning to work.

We want you to work as much as possible, and appreciate your willingness to work, even when you’re not feeling well, but coming to work sick is not something we can allow.

In regard to Coronavirus…we are monitoring the situation closely and are in regular contact with local, state, and federal officials. At this time, there are no plans to alter our event schedule. The building will be increasing sanitization efforts above our normal cleaning before, during, and after events to keep surfaces clean. I’m going to ask all of our foodservice staff to help by regularly sanitizing high contact surfaces in and around our work areas, such as door handles, counters, cabinet doors, sink faucet handles, refrigerators, cash registers (spray towel, then wipe touch screens…don’t spray touch screens directly), etc. Each of our 4 main concession stands have sanitizer mix stations at the 3 basin wash sinks, where you can refill sanitizer spray bottles. Please test the concentration to make sure it is approximately 400 ppm (test strip turns green). If you are unsure how to do this, ask me, and I’ll be happy to show you.

Little did I know what the next 30 hours would look like.

We sat around the office for a little while watching the television and tried to digest all the “breaking news” of the day. Dr. Anthony Fauci was testifying before congress. Harvey Weinstein was being sentenced. The WHO was declaring the coronavirus a global pandemic. The stock market was up for the day after being down big in several previous sessions. San Francisco announced they were banning gatherings over 1,000 people.

The NCAA announced that afternoon that the spring championship tournaments would be held without fans. As the host site for the NCAA Division II Men’s basketball Elite Eight and Final Four scheduled for the end of the month, we were realizing that at least one of our upcoming events would not proceed as originally envisioned. There was a little bit of excitement for us, as we thought we might get to take a few well-deserved days off after a long, grinding fall and winter event schedule. We then realized we would still probably have to work the event to supply the athletes, coaches, and media with meals, and our momentary excitement faded.

Before I left the office shortly after 5:00pm, I sent an email to the visitor services manager for Mesker Park Zoo & Botanic Garden informing her of the health and hygiene email I had sent out to our staff. The zoo had requested to be kept up to date with our sanitization practices several days prior, and I wanted to make sure they knew we were following the news closely and that we were on top of things.

I stopped by my father’s house on the way home from work. He had sent me a text an hour before letting me know he had pizza if I wanted any. I am not usually one to turn down a free meal offered by either of my parents. While at his house, I tried adjusting his grandfather clock which had not been keeping accurate time, and then spent a about an hour visiting with him in his basement while watching television. I told him I was not really sure how things were going to shake out, but that I was going to go to the grocery store after I left his house and stock up, and suggested he stock up as well. When I left his house, I had no idea I would not see him in person again for more than three months.

As a foodservice manager for an arena, part of my job is ensuring the product we serve tastes good, and that means from time to time, I must eat the food we serve. During the busy fall, winter, and spring months, it would not be uncommon for me to work 60-80 hours a week, and therefore, most of my meals were either consumed at work, or at a restaurant near the Ford Center. I did not keep much food in my house because I was rarely home long enough to eat anything there.

After leaving my father’s house, I went to the grocery store to buying more groceries than I would normally buy for several months. At the time, I really did not think I would need them, but I filled my freezer and picked up some extra non-perishable items, reasoning that they would last a long time and I would eventually eat them. I still had this expectation in my mind that I would still be at work regularly and that this was an overreaction, but something told me it was better to be safe and plan for the worst. I should note that at this point on that Wednesday evening, grocery stores were still well stocked, except for some sanitizing supplies. I am fairly certain that toilet paper was even still in stock, although I did not need any at the time.

While still in the store, I got a text message from my brother. “Do we just look the other way that Mom wants to go to Florida when so many corporations and businesses are restricting or cancelling travel plans? I’m concerned that she and Steve are high-risk individuals heading towards a community of other high-risk candidates for this disease.” The potential health impacts on my own family from this virus had not really hit me until that text message. I sent my mother a text message from the canned soup isle stating that my brother and I had some concerns about her planned trip to Florida that upcoming weekend and cited a story in “The Atlantic” of the extraordinary decisions facing Italian doctors. She said that the risks were the same here as they were down there, that she was in a movie theater at that moment, and she would talk to me later. In the checkout line, the woman in front of me had a cough, and made sure she told everyone she had allergies and that she was not sick. It would be more than a year before I would step foot inside a grocery store again. I took my groceries home and tried to digest everything that was happening.

Later that evening, news broke from the NBA about Rudy Gobert’s positive coronavirus test results, and Donald Trump addressed the nation on national television from the Oval Office.

This was my world on March 11, 2020, and the beginning of the end of my “normal”.

Thursday, March 12, 2020

To pull off a successful live event takes weeks, often months of planning and preparation. When done correctly, few people ever realize all the effort that goes into pulling them off. Guests attending the event want to be able to get into the venue without a lot of hassle, pick out a souvenir or two from a merchandise stand, get their favorite food or beverage without waiting in a long line, and be able to spend a few hours enjoying the event without having to think or worry about all the effort behind the scenes that makes their experience go off without a hitch. Guests do not notice when everything is going right, but if something is off, they pick up on it quickly.

My job as concessions manager is to try to anticipate anything that could go wrong in advance and put a plan in place to keep the food and beverage operation running smoothly so that guests have a positive experience with us. When I am planning to serve 10,000 people from more than 60 points of sale with a staff of over 100 individuals working across multiple floors of a building, there is a long checklist to go through, including making sure all cash registers work, menus are accurate, product is fully stocked, and enough staff is scheduled, not to mention contingency planning for staff call-offs. There is a plan in place to restock concessions and bars in real time as they sell product during the event, and anticipating what the most popular items will be and pre-staging and coordinating how all of those restocks occur is just as important as having the stands stocked for the initial rush when doors open. The goal is for us to never have to tell a customer that we are out of a product on the menu at any point in time. The day before an event, I check, double check, and then check everything one more time to make sure we are as ready as we can be. In all my years doing this job, I have learned there are always going to be surprises that pop up during events that you have to work through on the fly, but the more I can plan for and anticipate in advance, the smoother the event day will run for everyone.

March 12 was the final prep day for the sold-out Lauren Diagle concert scheduled for the following day. Produce arrived from our produce supplier, and my staff stocked the concession stands with fresh lettuce, tomatoes, and onions for sandwiches. They stocked the bars with fresh lemons, limes, and oranges for cocktails. They plugged in nacho cheese warmers and loaded them with cheese. They pulled hot dogs and bratwurst out of freezers and put them in refrigerators to start thawing out. They checked ice machines to make sure they were making ice and would be at maximum capacity for the following day. They changed out grease in deep fryers. They checked soap and paper towel dispensers to make sure they were in good working order. The beer order I had placed the day before for our extra beer arrived, and my staff took the pallets of beer up to the concourse, unboxed them, and loaded refrigerators at all the bars with case after case after case of beer.

Around lunch time, I found myself on the CDC website trying to educate myself about the coronavirus, and found some information sheets about preventing the spread of COVID-19, and some cartoon superhero themed handwashing reminders online that I printed off, laminated, and posted in all of the concession stands and bars throughout the building. I wanted to do everything I could to inform my staff of the importance of taking necessary precautions, but still wanted to keep the mood light and not scare them.

As the day progressed and I was feeling more confident in our preparations for the concert, I was also trying to keep tabs on the cascading “breaking news” headlines that were crossing my cell phone. The word “unprecedented” would lose its impact with me as the day wore on, but even midway through the afternoon, all of our events for that weekend were still a “go”, so we were full steam ahead with final preparations.

Around 3:30pm, our world would change.

I was on the concourse double checking the cash registers at our portable bar locations to make sure they were properly wired up to connect to the server, while at the same time our merchandise manager was working to wire up her credit card machines at the merchandise stands. The executive director of the building came walking around the corner, saw us diligently working on final preparations for the concert, and just casually told us we could stop. Puzzled, I asked if that meant the concert the following day was being postponed, and he replied that the entire weekend was off.

Throughout the day, I had begun to feel more and more uneasy about the prospect of putting on a sold-out event in our building with everything going on in the world. I was beginning to question the wisdom of trying to push through and do the event, and deep down I did not see how we could proceed, but even up until that moment when he said to stop, I still believed there was a decent chance we would do the concert, and the hockey games the nights following.

I asked the executive director if I should send my staff, who were putting the finishing touches on our preparations, home, and he nodded and said that probably would be a good idea.

When I located my staff, they were taking the last of the flattened cardboard boxes from all their stocking out to the cardboard dumpster outside. I let them finish disposing of the cardboard and told them I appreciated their hard work and that they could call it a day. I hinted to them that there would be some news coming out later in the evening but did not explicitly tell them what I knew. I would have to wait several more hours before the news of our event cancellations became public knowledge.

As I returned to my office around 4:00pm, the Evansville Vanderburgh School Corporation was announcing on the local news stations that they will be conducting classes via e-learning the following week, with plans to resume regular classes following their spring break two weeks later. All three area colleges also announced they would be extending their spring breaks for a week and then move to online classes for a few weeks.

The Indiana Governor announced a ban on all “non-essential” gatherings of 250 people or more.

I walked out of my office and out onto the Ford Center arena floor, which was already set with the stage for the concert that would not happen the following day. I thought about taking a picture of the empty stadium but opted not to do so. At 4:58pm, I posted a short text message on Facebook:

Someday I’m going to look back on today and laugh about it…I hope.

Really weird day…

To say there aren’t words doesn’t do it justice.

I wondered into the front office of the Ford Center where our executive director’s office is and sat down in a chair outside his office for a while. Several other managers were just milling around the front office area, not sure what to do. Although it was after 5:00pm, nobody really wanted to go home.

The waiting game had begun. At that point, I knew there would be no events at the Ford Center for at least a month, perhaps much longer. The remainder of the hockey season was going to be cancelled. Concerts were being postponed or cancelled entirely. Basketball tournaments would not happen. Monster Jam shows were in doubt. A charity boxing match was in limbo. I knew all of this, but my staff, non-profit groups, and third-party vendors did not, and I could not break the news to them. I had to wait until each event had made a public statement before I could inform my team that they would not have any work for the foreseeable future, a waiting game that would drag late into the evening.

Around 6:00pm I went back to my office and sat down at my desk and began drafting the most difficult email I have ever written, because I knew that when I would hit send on that email, the pandemic would become real, and all our lives would be forever changed. I would have to wait several hours before I could press send when the last of the events finally made their postponement public via a press release. I sent the below email to my staff, took a deep breath, and went home.

Thursday, March 12, 2020 – 8:40pm

In response to the spread of COVID-19 (coronavirus), at the direction of Governor Holcomb and Mayor Winnecke, together with the Southern Professional Hockey League (SPHL), the NCAA, and concert promotors, the decision was made to postpone, suspend, or cancel events at the Ford Center over the next couple of weeks in the interest of public health.

You should NOT report to the Ford Center for any previously scheduled shifts at the Ford Center until further notice.

The safety, health, and wellbeing of our event staff, performers, and the general public is our greatest concern, and we believe this is the right decision.

Although this is still an evolving situation, this is my understanding of where we stand. Please note that this is subject to change…

– The Lauren Daigle concert scheduled for Friday, March 13 will be rescheduled for a later date. August 14 will be the reschedule date for Lauren Daigle. Tickets purchased for the Lauren Daigle concert will be honored for the reschedule date.

– The Reba McEntire concert scheduled for Friday, March 20 will be rescheduled for a later date. August 8 is the date posted on Reba’s website, but I can’t independently confirm that reschedule date yet tonight. Tickets purchased for Reba will be honored for the reschedule date.

– The NCAA DII Men’s Basketball Elite Eight scheduled for March 26-28 has been cancelled and will not be rescheduled.

–The SPHL has suspended their hockey season, meaning the remaining Thunderbolts hockey games for March 14, March 15, March 21, March 22, April 3, and April 4 will not be played as scheduled. Ticket holders will need to contact the Thunderbolts office in the coming days regarding their tickets. Please be patient with them as they work through the high call volume.

As of this moment, it looks like the Monster Jam monster truck events scheduled for April 10 and April 11 would be our next event dates at the Ford Center, assuming things have calmed down by then. I’ve also seen on social media that Guns & Hoses is planning to move their date from April 18 to August 22, but I can’t independently confirm that date change yet.

I’ll be in and out of the office over the next couple weeks and working remotely from home when I can. I’ll keep you posted as I learn more, and I’ll be requesting availability from staff for the month of April once we have a little more clarity and confidence in the April event schedule. Stay tuned for more updates…

Please be safe over the next couple of weeks, wash your hands, try not to touch your face, and follow the advice of the trained medical experts. We’ll all get through this, and I’ll see you soon.

All the preparations for these events, and many others further down the line, were for naught. The over 400 full and part-time employees at the Ford Center were without jobs. Hundreds of thousands more across the country, and millions around the world that all work to support live events were all in the same boat. We were the first industry to completely shut down because of the pandemic and would be the last to return.

What we thought would be a month-long break would turn into a summer, then a fall. Basketball would return to the Ford Center in the winter of 2020, although it would have attendance severely limited. Two cheerleading competitions would be held in the spring of 2021 with limited attendance, and college graduations that had been postponed for an entire year would follow in May of 2021. It would not be until June 4, 2021, a full 15 months after the last “normal” event at the Ford Center, that all the staff would be allowed to return and any event that even remotely resembled anything pre-COVID would be attempted.