Improvements transform Pinewood Bowl from a stage in the park to a professional venue | Music

Then came the artists building that provides dressing rooms, showers and a green room for performers, along with expanding the backstage area to accommodate the trucks and buses that are part of each show.

Constructing the latest improvements, which came at a cost of $1.2 million, required some significant alterations to the bowl.

Filling in the orchestra pit, removing shrubbery and putting down artificial turf immediately in front of the stage altered the look for some shows, including last Sunday’s Jack White concert, the first at Pinewood Bowl this season.

Two large diseased pine trees had to be removed to construct the 20-foot-tall towers that will permanently house spotlights and replace the open-air concession stand near the top of the bowl.

“We always want to maintain the bowl surrounded by trees,” Lorenz said. “It still has that, even with the new construction and the removal of those trees.”

Earlier improvements, paid for by ASM-Global, the company that operates the Lincoln arena, and Mammoth, the promoter that brings shows to Pinewood, lowered the sound mixing and lighting platform in the center of the bowl to allow more seating and attached steel frames to the stage walls to hang curved speaker systems.

One major project remains in the step-by-step process aimed at bringing the 80-year-old bowl up to contemporary standards — replacing the stage’s metal roof.

The current roof, which was installed in the ’70s, is not large or strong enough to hang the lighting, video boards and other equipment integral to today’s touring productions.

A replacement has not yet been authorized, designed or funded, but it will be expensive, likely to require well over $1 million for construction and installation.

For now, recent alterations are expected to push the bowl’s capacity up from the current 4,500 mark for seated concerts.

“We think we probably gained a little bit,” Lorenz said. “We certainly gained in a general admission pit.”

Any changes to seating configurations won’t be evident until next year. Tickets for the 2022 season are being sold under the previous alignment.

If next year’s seating capacity hits the concert industry magic number of 5,000, it could bring more shows to the bowl, which hosted an average of 10 shows a year from 2012, when the city approved alcohol sales allowing concerts to take place, to 2019.

A total of 14 shows were slated for Pinewood Bowl this year. Last month’s Styx/REO Speedwagon and Earth, Wind & Fire concerts were moved to the arena after construction-related runoff from heavy rains covered the upper part of the bowl with mud.

“It may add to the number of shows,” Lorenz said. “But it really might change the mix of shows, with a few more larger artists who probably wouldn’t have been available before.”