Alerus Center — Attraction in Grand Forks

Attended the luke combs concert on Friday Sept. 17th 2021.

The music quality inside the venue was great.

The logistics getting into/out and moving around the venue were absolutely horrendous. I've been to many concerts, and this was by far the worst. No organization, very little signage. Patrons had no idea where their seats were on the floor seating. Printed pieces of paper taped to the back of chairs, one per seating section, were the only thing labeling the seating area. Needles to say, half of those were gone before the show started. The seat numbers were also paper, tapped to the chairs.. Most of those were also missing.

Now, let's get to the beer lines. No organization at all. Multiple little carts set up with the only place to for people to line up, was into the seating area isles. No organization what so ever, multiple lines all converging at a single cart, with no path for people leaving the cart to get back to their seat. This also did not leave any path for people trying to get to their seats without having to navigate through the beer lines. Waited in line for 45 mins on two separate occasions for 2 beers. The carts were attended by one person to collect money and hand out beer. Could have been much more fluent with two people, one handling cash and another handling drinks. I've been to much larger venues, with much larger crowds, who have sold much more beer, and have never encountered such poor logistical decisions. It was almost as if this venue has never held a concert before.

Now, let's get to the idiotic idea of requiring that each beer purchased, having to be poured out of the aluminum bottle into a plastic cup. For what purpose? No one knows. To save trash? No, they created twice the trash and took up multiple people having to empty trash containers behind the drink carts as they filled up with empty aluminum bottles/cans, when they could have been assisting patrons. This also didn't solve any littering issues, because those plastic cups they insisted on pouring the beers into, ended up right where you could have guessed, on the floor. Whoever made that decision should be relieved of their job immediately and sent back to elementary school in hopes of learning some common sense.

I won't be attending concerts at the Alerus center anymore.

Edit: was convinced by friends to attend the Morgan wallen concert on 3/12. Stood in line for 45 minutes just to get in the alerus center. Thank God it wasn't below zero. Different setup, same result. Over an hour to get a beer. Between standing in line to get in and a beer, we missed the whole opening act. Over 2hrs of wasted time.

Morgan was phenomenal. The alerus is an abomination of a venue. Myself and everyone else I talked to inside the venue vowed never to come back. That...

I have attended 3 events at the Alerus Center in the last 10 days. First, Thomas Rhett. The building and show were great, but the lines for beverages were horrible. It was less than half full (8,500ish with an arena capacity of 21,000.) I was lucky to make it to my seat 3 songs into his set after arriving during the second opening act. The bartenders seemed to be stretched too thin and the ones I saw appeared to be in no rush. The 4 drink limit instead of 2 is great when you finally get to the front of the line, but causes longer lines altogether. The second was Chris Stapleton. This one was more full, 15,000ish people. I arrived in the middle of the first of the two opening acts and didn’t see my seat until his FIFTH song because I wanted one round of drinks. Over an hour and a half waiting in line. Ruined the entire experience. Wouldn’t you think they’d learn and adapt? The third was my best friend’s wedding. Not only did the staff cut the rehearsal dinner short by about 45 minutes, but they gave us no direction and had a very old and rude “security person” getting mad at us for things like having a bottle of soda that we purchased in the connecting hotel or going through the wrong door to the rehearsal. We didn’t know? He even forcibly took a beverage out of someone’s hand during the reception without warning. Overall, the lack of organization and professionalism from varying staff members has turned me away from willingly entering this building ever again. It would take a lot for me to go to another concert here and I most certainly wouldn’t even consider having a wedding here. Only giving the extra star because at least they managed to pull these great events into their building and because the bar manager working the wedding was the only pleasant staff member I came across during...

Dangerous, Uncontrolled, Inept

I went to the Kiss concert last night at the Alerus Center and now remember why I try and avoid this facility as much as possible.

First, never were our tickets checked, not once. Went through security and got wanded but no one requested to look at our tickets. This actually scared me somewhat, anyone could have entered the venue.

Second, I paid a significant amount of money to enjoy seats in the eighth row. I had to go and find security several times as they were allowing anyone to walk up the aisles to the front, stand in front of us and enjoy the concert. Granted, toward the end they were getting better but it was intrusive, disruptive, and rude not to mention an extreme safety hazard.

Third, trying to enter or exit this venue is next to impossible in any kind of organized fashion. I believe I counted 4 total ingress/egress roads. Imagine the backed up traffic trying to move that many vehicles with that many entrances. Literally took and 1 1/2 hours to exit the parking lot, probably picked the worst line but again, no one guiding traffic whats so ever other than the inept GF police dept on the frontage road.

Finally, I have tried to avoid the Alerus Center as much as possible, I really have because there is never any attempt to improve it. I have a medical diagnosis that has caused me to re-evaluate the things I want to do and seeing some acts for maybe my last time possible has forced me to say, "I will try again". It's sad that booking companies don't take venues into more consideration before booking with them because if they were to look closer at this venue I'm confident they would be booking 70...