THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, August 17, 1995 TAG: 9508170001
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A14 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: Short : 50 lines
Jimmy Buffett played the Nissan Pavilion outside Manassas the other day, drawing the amphitheater's first sellout crowd since it opened in June. Lots of people crawled along Interstate 66 heading in, and lots got stuck in muddy parking lots heading home. Is this a harbinger of horrors for the Virginia Beach amphitheater, built by Cellar Door and the city of Virginia Beach, now under construction and due to open next spring?
Get 25,000 people headed to the same new place at about the same time and if you don't have a traffic backup, traffic engineers all over America want you.
Put those 25,000 people on the already overcrowded roadways of the Washington 'burbs and you've got what Bill Reid, president of Cellar Door in Virginia Beach, calls ``a recipe for trouble.'' The one major road leading to the Manassas facility, Interstate 66, is scheduled to become four lanes by next year; it is now under construction in the evening hours to inconvenience rush-hour drivers least. The roads leading from I-66 to the amphitheater are two-lane, and won't be widened for several years.
Life is a learning experience and the Nissan Pavilion, like other amphitheaters around the country, speeds the learning curve for Virginia Beach. Unlike there, concertgoers here will travel from several directions over several main arteries, particularly the eight lanes of Princess Anne Road. The access road to the parking area will be six-lane. The parking lots will be graveled from the start. Police will be on hand to direct traffic. A sellout crowd of 20,000 is anticipated maybe five times a year. Of the 45 scheduled events, about half will be on weekends, with an average attendance of 10,000, and half on weekdays, with average attendance of 6,000.
Even without Jimmy Buffett, every car won't get a straight shot into the park, mainly because 60 percent of concertgoers arrive within 60 minutes of showtime. But some will get out of the lot in the first five minutes. And the guys 45 minutes behind them - a study predicts everybody out in less than an hour - won't be the happiest folk whom reporters ever in-ter-viewed.
Still, plenty of Parrotheads came to the Pavilion prepared not to waste away in parkinglotville. They brought the makings of a tailgate party. A prime ingredient is attitude.
Anticipation is the name of the game: Officials have to anticipate the crowd, the problems and the grousing. The crowd has to anticipate the wait. Both have to adjust where necessary. by CNB