Friday night’s Gentlemen of the Road Stopover concert drew 23,367 to the stadium during a festival that started Thursday, ended Saturday night and left the Miami County city basking in pride as one of only three towns in the United States chosen for three-day excursions by the band from London.
“It was a Labor Day weekend labor of love,” Mayor Michael Beamish said Tuesday. “It was a historic and epic event for Troy.”
Karin Manovich of the downtown business group Main Street Troy said band members Marcus Mumford and Ben Lovett both told her Saturday night’s stadium show “was the best live performance they have ever been part of, and they have performed about 1,200 times.”
By Tuesday afternoon, crews hired by Jam Productions of Chicago were completing cleanup in the multi-block area where stages, vendors and campgrounds had been installed last week.
“The city looks great. There’s very little evidence left that they were here,” Manovich said.
The concert numbers in Troy’s 10,000-seat stadium near the Great Miami River “are a record by a long shot,” Troy Schools Superintendent Eric Herman said.
The stadium’s grass field, covered for the concerts by a portable “breathable” material, “held up well,” said Ted Mercer of the Mercer Group, which cares for the field.
Including the concert crowd, there was a peak of 40,000 people in and around the stadium on Saturday, Beamish said.
Manovich said the $5 wristbands allowing entry to the venue sold out at one point.
“We knew there were health and safety risks going into an event that virtually doubled our city’s population of 25,059 in a tight area, included 11,000 tents and the serving of alcohol. We had Care Flight there. We had triage units set up downtown and at the stadium,” Beamish said.
“There were no serious incidents. About 60 people were treated for dehydration. There were a couple cases of underage drinking and a few individuals who overindulged and had to be escorted out.”
The Miami County Jail reported that five people were booked for disorderly conduct or resisting arrest. Chief Deputy Dave Duchack said Deputy Tina Waymire injured a wrist trying to place handcuffs on one offender and was off work on Tuesday.
Patrick Titterington, the city’s service and safety director, said overall expenses for Troy and other communities involved will require a few weeks to calculate.
Beamish said local merchants were still adding up their figures for a weekend expected to have up to $20 million in regional economic impact.
“We stayed open until midnight Thursday and Friday. We did great business,” said David Fair, whose interiors and consignment shop on Troy’s downtown square won the “Extreme Window Makeover” contest that was judged by Mumford and Sons.
Beamish said the crowd included “families with young children, grandmothers and everyone in between. I’m very proud of our city.”
Fair said he was “still recovering, but with a smile on my face. It was outstanding, phenomenal, amazing or any other superlative you want to use.”
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