Council Bluffs venue prepared for onslaught of Chappell Roan fans

Roan is scheduled to perform Thursday night at the Westfair Amphitheatre as part of her “Midwest Princess Tour.” The Council Bluffs stop was announced as part of an extension of the tour, which started last September.

The 26-year-old from Willard, Missouri, with other recent hits including “Good Luck, Babe!” and “Pink Pony Club,” has seen a meteoric rise to fame after her April performance at California’s Coachella festival. Later this month, she’ll be performing at both weekends of the Austin City Limits Music Festival in Texas.

Cammi Howard, owner of ATD Event Services, said seeing Chappell Roan’s recent festival crowds gave her a sense of the explosive fandom, but the response to ticket sales was still overwhelming. ATD Event Services is the venue manager for the concert and is co-promoting the show with First Fleet Concerts.

Howard said both presale and general public tickets for the concert sold out within a minute.

“Luckily, our servers were able to keep up, but there were more people in the waiting room waiting for tickets than there were tickets available,” Howard said.

Westfair holds 13,000 people, but ticket sales were limited to 12,500 to ensure the venue stayed safely below capacity, Howard said.

Ticketing company AXS also had issues with tickets being purchased by bots, according to Howard, but was able to revoke those purchases and instead issue those tickets to actual fans.

“I thought they did a really great job with making sure that tickets got into the hands of people that were actually trying to attend the concert,” Howard said.

402 Protection Group, which handles events at Memorial Stadium in Lincoln and has experience working with large crowds, will be handling security for the event, Howard said.

Howard said the venue will also have approximately four times the amount of parking staff as it did for its last event to try to reduce the wait time for parking.

Parking for the concert will open at 8 a.m., and Howard said event staff is prepared to have fans show up early. The main gates to the venue will open at 5 p.m.

“We know that the public is so excited about her being here, so we’re excited as well,” Howard said of the opportunity to host Roan.

Amanda Tjarks, owner of the Albany and Avers vintage clothing store in Dundee, said she thinks the excitement around Roan is especially heightened because pop stars often leave the Omaha area out of their tour stops.

“It’s not often that we get really big names in pop here,” Tjarks said. “People are just really happy to have her here.”

Albany and Avers is hosting a preparty for the concert on Wednesday that will include curated concert looks, custom merch and pop-ups from other small businesses, Tjarks said.

“It’s going to be a great place for people just to come hang out and meet other people who enjoy her music and want to have a fun night,” she said.

Tjarks said the event is open to fans whether they were able to score tickets for Thursday’s show or not. Tjarks said she herself was one of the lucky fans who was able to get tickets, using her knowledge from previous high-stakes ticket-buying situations.

“I had, like, multiple computers and iPads up working to get them, ” she said.