New Northerly Island "Arena" Gets Tested Out Today

We've been monitoring the progress of the renovations at Northerly Island's music venue (formerly known as Charter One Pavilion - now being rebranded as FirstMerit Bank Arena) for awhile now.

Last we heard, things were delayed.

Fast forward to today and supposedly everything is in place for the massive crowd they're expecting.  We will see.

The backdrop of the city should be nice.  But again we're taking a wait and see approach with this.

Further fanning our doubts is this article in the Tribune that doesn't sound encouraging for getting in and out of the venue:

Getting in/out: Plan ahead. There will be more than three times as many people in attendance for big shows. The main entrance has been widened, and there are separate entrances for lawn access, to alleviate pedestriann bottleneck. In a Tribune story in March, Campana (Live Nation North American Co-President) acknowledged that access to the concert venue could become more challenging. Linn White Drive, the main road, will be reconfigured to allow for more pedestrian traffic into the facility. "I don't want to be naive and say it's going to be great all the time," Campana said in March. "If they come hard from the parking lot all at once, it'll be like coming into Alpine (Valley Music Theatre near East Troy, Wis.) or Wrigley (Field) right before a show."

Hopefully he's just setting the bar low.

We recently went by the new facility last weekend and it looked fine.  Honestly not that much different.

We're going to the buffett concert today, so we will let you know how it goes.