AMARILLO, TEXAS -- This weekend, one person was killed when a temporary stage collapsed at a concert in Toronto at a Radiohead concert.
This fourth tragedy since last year in North America got us wondering about Amarillo's new events center.
We caught up with Melissa Dailey of Downtown Amarillo Inc., to see how the renovation is going and what precautions are being taken.
For Amarillo's proposed events center, staging will be used when concerts and special events are planned and officials know safety has to be their main priority.
"Certainly we'll try to make that as safe as possible," Dailey said. 'The concert stage we're looking at is something that can be built and then torn down for other events, baseball gamess and we want to learn from what happened and make sure it's as safe as it can be."
She added that they'll be bringing in groups you wouldn't normally see at the Civic Center as another venue for people wanting to get out and take in some of the city's downtown features.
"There's a lot of concert venues that will only do outdoor events and so we're trargeting those and we dont' wnat to pull anything that's at the Civic Center and their venue, so we want to attract new concerts and I wouldn't say specifically, but we want to bring in a company to parnter with the baseball team to manage the facility that specializes in events."
Future plans for the revitalization of Amarillo's downtown continue with final contracts being ironed out and demolition continuing before construction starts.
"Just a lot of paperwork and we all want to see dirt flying and I think we will soon. It's been four years to get downtown this way and it will take a few years for us to start re-building so I think we're close.
She expects the end of the demolition very soon and construction should begin shortly thereafter, ending sometime in 2015, resulting in more and safer events in Amarillo.
