Elton John, Fleetwood Mac, Neil Diamond, Taylor Swift and soon John Mayer will have entertained scores of fans on stage at the Tyson Events Center, 401 Gordon Drive.
The $53 million entertainment and sporting venue, which opened its doors in 2003, will celebrate its 10th birthday in December.
Reflecting on the past decade, Events Facilities Department interim director and Convention Bureau Manager Erika Newton said securing big-name performers, such as these, stands out in her mind as the facility’s greatest accomplishment.
“We’ve had a lot of really big-name acts come through the Tyson Events Center that normally a market our size normally wouldn’t always get,” she said. “We’ve been very fortunate to have good partnerships with promoters and agents who believe in Sioux City and put big shows in our arena.”
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The state-of-the-art venue sold out six shows in calendar year 2011 - the largest number of sellouts since it opened. Newton said she thinks Grammy Award-winning Mayer’s Nov. 20 concert will appeal to a mass audience and do well at the ticket office.
“It’s a show that normally wouldn’t play a market our size. I think that’s something that we’re seeing regularly with Sioux City,” she said. “We’re getting shows and when you look at the rest of the tour dates, they’re not playing communities the size of Sioux City.”
The Tyson Events Center is also making its mark in social media circles. Newton said the venue currently has more than 52,000 fans on Facebook, making it a social media powerhouse.
The facility ranked No. 5 on the Venues Today Social Media Power 100 list among venues with capacities of 5,001-15,000. It was the only Iowa venue to make the list, which put it in the same category as places such as Radio City Music Hall, Red Rocks Amphitheater just west of Denver, and the Nokia Theater in Los Angeles.
“For a community of about 100,000 people to have more than 52,000 people on Facebook, that’s a pretty significant number,” Newton said. “Obviously we have lot of great local and regional support for what we’re doing here, which is great. That’s how we continue to get shows.”
Newton said the Tyson Events Center is a building that both visitors and former residents want to keep up with on social media, which she said serves as another avenue to interact with patrons.
The 10,000-seat Tyson Events Center, which was designed by firms Ellerbe Becket of Kansas City and FEH Associates Inc. of Sioux City, is equipped with a full-size ice hockey rink surrounded by a U-shaped seating bowl. The arena is home to the Sioux City Musketeers hockey team and also hosts the annual Fall Classic, where 200 NHL and college coaches come to scout players.
The stage can be placed at the open end of the seating bowl or at the center of the floor to accommodate performers such as Reba McEntire and Aerosmith.
The venue’s exterior is composed of tinted green glass and metal. At the south entrance, a tile mosaic with waterfall depicts the Missouri River and Loess Hills.
“I think it’s just reached enough momentum that it continues to just grow on its own now,” Newton said of the venue’s social media presence. “We don’t have to do much of anything to get a lot of new Facebook fans coming to our page everyday.”
Newton said a special event to celebrate the Tyson Events Center’s 10 years in operation is tentatively planned to take place during a Sioux City Musketeers home game in December.
