The newly renovated Tucson Arena will get its first test drive as a concert venue on Jan. 3, when the Beach Boys come to town.
Tickets — $25 and $35 — are on sale now through Ticketmaster. The concert is underwritten by Rio Nuevo, Concorde Construction and SMG Worldwide Entertainment.
“It’s really our hope to allow people to see the new venue in concert form. It will have all new sound and lights and new seats. New bathrooms. A new entrance to the breezeway," said Fletcher McCusker, chairman of Rio Neuvo.
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This will be the first time Tucson will experience the arena as a concert venue since its $8 million renovation that included new lighting and sound systems, new seats, new restrooms and new concessions.
"We really worked on trying to improve the aesthetics (and) to really bring it back as a concert venue," he said, ticking off a list of improvements that included replacing every hard plastic seat with cushioned seats, installing polished concrete floors in the restrooms and breezeways, and completely redoing the bathrooms from the stalls to the toilets.
The project took the better part of the last year, he said.
SMG Worldwide Entertainment, a global entertainment management team that runs arenas throughout the country, took over management of the facility three weeks ago. It brought in new concessions that will feature regional cuisine, McCusker said, and will be responsible for booking artists into the arena.
But bringing in the Beach Boys, featuring Mike Love and Bruce Johnston, was largely McCusker's doing.
The founder and CEO of Providence Service Corp. and the Tucson-based home-health-care business Sinfonía Healthcare had a connection to Love through his son, who runs a radio station in California.
“I’m 65. I grew up listening to their music," McCusker said. "They sound as good today as they did back then.”
