Idea: What We Should Do With Clemens Field
The Beatles. The Clash. Billy Joel. Kenny Chesney. Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers. Foo Fighters. Rolling Stones. Taylor Swift. No, I'm not going through my iPod. Well... I am, and they're all there. BUT! Those are all artists who have played baseball stadiums. Which leads me to segue into the title of this post: We should turn Clemens Field into a concert venue!
I have no delusions that we'll attract top drawing talent like Kenny Chesney, the Stones or Foo Fighters. They play Wrigley and Fenway. What I am saying is that we could attract some serious talent to the area and host some decent live acts. Get the families out who don't want to go to a bar show. We've already shown our ability, as a market, to draw some serious talent like Eric Paslay, Natalie Stovall & The Drive, Jason Michael Carroll, Little Texas and Jerrod Niemann. And that's just in 2016. And that's just country. That's not exploring who we could get if we made a go for rock, pop, blues or oldies acts.
With Hannibal Cavemen ceasing operations for the 2017 season, and the future looking less and less like it needs to wear shades, let's re-purpose it for a nice concert venue, instead of letting it sit vacant for 50 years like we did the last time a team moved out. The stadium already holds 2,500 for ball games, you can get more than that by adding seating to the field. In a micro-politan area pushing 80,000, and being striking distance from Springfield, Columbia and yes, even St. Louis, we could more than fill it with the right acts.
Might I be so bold as to even propose a weekend festival? I'll be that bold.... We should do a festival.