‘The Heart of Town’ At Pier 48 Demonstrates New Concert Potential for SF Giants

More and more venues, teams and artists are looking to find new ways to bring the music to the fans and – and, when there’s no venue, to bring the venue to the music.

In recent months we’ve seen venue firsts including Zach Bryan’s upcoming barn burner at the University of Michigan, where he’s set to play to more than 112,000 fans at the biggest stadium in the U.S. Other firsts, albeit not quite on that record-breaking scale, include this Friday’s Big Time Boxing event at the Fox Theatre in Detroit, a historic, ornate theater that has undergone recent seating upgrades that allow for for GA pit and other creative configurations.

Another example is Pier 48 in San Francisco, a mostly unused space adjacent to Oracle Park as part of its 28-acre Mission Rock multi-use development, just south of the stadium. 

Following investment from Giants Enterprises and a co-promotion between Peter Shapiro’s Dayglo Presents and Terrapin Station Entertainment, the quickly produced “Heart of Town” three-day concert event July 31 to Aug 2 piggybacked on what was a packed weekend celebrating the Grateful Dead’s 60th anniversary with multiple events at Golden Gate Park, already building on the success of the popular Outside Lands festival that takes place there annually. 

Billed as “Hosted by Grahame Lesh & Friends” and later adding Stephen Stills as a headliner, the three-day event grossed around $700,000 according to organizers.  

Mostly a blank canvas, the team is looking into getting some more permanent infrastructure in place to help large concert productions in and out and readily able to activate on game night or as a standalone venue. Capacity is around 5,000.

“Live Nation and Another Planet were very supportive and helped us get the word out,” says Sara Grauf, senior vice president of experience development for the Giants. She says more shows are already in the works, and the team is looking into adding permanent infrastructure to the space, which currently lacks permanent seating or stage. “At the end of the day we all wanted people to come together around an incredible weekend of music, so it didn’t feel competitive. We’re not looking to become a concert promoter overnight. Ultimately we want this to be more of a turnkey venue, which, from a promoter perspective, it’s a lot more attractive to engage quickly.” 

She says the team could ultimately produce 30 to 50 events per year at the space, with ticketed concert events as well as community events likely. Pier 48 events could piggyback on existing events at the stadium, such as its 81 Giants home games, or blockbuster concerts that take place on the field at Oracle Park itself such as recent shows by My Chemical Romance, Post Malone, Shakira, Kendrick Lamar and many others.

The Pier 48 venue space allows for a festival-type environment, able to bring in food trucks and relying on production partners like Clair to bring in staging and lights, which for the inaugural event went over very well and got industry attention.

“It’s a really big bespoke space almost akin to a hangar, an indoor-outdoor space that makes it unique,” says Terrapin Station Entertainment’s Jonathan Shank, who co-promoted the show. Heart of Town was headlined by Stephen Stills, who performed “Teach Your Children”  with Dawes, the 1970 Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young studio recording of which featured Jerry Garcia on pedal steel guitar, a not-unnoticed Dead tie-in on the weekend.  

Shank credits Giants Enterprises and Sound Image with pulling off the logistics and production aspects leading to positive feedback from those in attendance, and all parties appear eager for more soon at Pier 48.

“We’re definitely looking into a series of shows for early next year and i think this past weekend really served as the proof of concept for this venue,” says Shank, whose Terrapin Sports division consults and books talent for venues including AT&T Stadium in Dallas, TQL Stadium in Cincinnati and others. “Now that everybody has seen what the venue is capable of, I think we’re going to have a lot of opportunities.”