Nearly a year ago to the day, Pinnacle Bank Arena General Manager Tom Lorenz and I were in a loge box, looking down on the arena floor as DaBaby whipped about 6,600 people into a frenzy with a spinning mosh pit in front of the stage.
Tearing through hits like “Suge,†“Bop†and the soon-to-be-chart-topping “Rockstar,†DaBaby started filming the show for his Instagram feed and urged crowd members to pull out their cameras.
“We’ve got Nebraska looking like New York City,†DaBaby said. “We’re going to have a lot of viral moments tonight.â€
No one, Lorenz included, could have anticipated what would transpire over the next year following that March 11, 2020, show.
It would be the last concert held at the arena — a distinction it is certain to retain for at least four more months.
That wasn’t what Lorenz and I expected when we were talking about the coronavirus outbreak that had begun to shut down concerts and sporting events that week.Ìý
“We figured by June, we (would) be out of this stuff,†Lorenz said this week. “It didn’t happen that way.
"If the company and the industry had known this would last a year, we’d have made some different decisions. Instead of trying to stay ready, we’d have worked on how to best close down.â€
The hesitancy to shut down was, in large part, because concerts that had been slated for last spring were postponed, not canceled — most moving to dates in the fall.
However, when Elton John pushed his “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road†tour back by more than a year, moving his scheduled June concert in Lincoln to March 2022, it became clear that shows would be off for a year or more.
“They were ahead of everybody on that,†Lorenz said.
The only show drawing more than 2,000 people in Lincoln in the past year, and one of the few anywhere in the country, was the Beach Boys concert at Pinewood Bowl in August.
Ironically, given the COVID-19 shutdown, the arena just hosted its first event with a crowd larger than the DaBaby show.
That would be the vaccination clinic on Monday that saw about 8,000 people come through the arena to get their COVID shots.
“That really was our first major event in a year,†Lorenz said. “The vaccination clinics are as much events as some of our smaller concerts."
Pinnacle Bank Arena has hosted 11 vaccination sessions in the last month and can share in the credit for about 38,000 people getting their shots in that time.
The Lincoln-Lancaster County Health Department clinics are perfectly suited for the arena, Lorenz said, because they allow arena staff to use their skill set in crowd flow and parking, feeding volunteers and managing the space to help make the vaccination operation efficient and trouble-free.
But make no mistake, there are major differences to hosting a concert or sporting event — and facilitating much-needed public health services.
The former is far more entertaining — and lucrative, Lorenz said.Ìý
“Instead of having music blaring in the building, we have the sound of filling out forms and (needles and other biohazardous materials) being thrown away,†said Lorenz, who added jokingly thatÌý"we’re not selling any beverages at vaccination clinics. No beer and no merch yet.â€
The clinics, which will continue at the arena for the next two to three months, should be even more efficient starting next week, he said.
The basketball court that has been in place will be pulled Saturday night after the final boys state basketball tournament game, allowing the clinics to use the main floor rather than the second-floor concourse.
And soon — likely by summer, after Lancaster County has been thoroughly vaccinated from a virus that shut down the world, shut down life as we know it — the performers will be back on stage.