All summer long Western New Yorkers have packed Canalside to check out a wide variety of acts during the Thursday night concert series. Thursday night’s show featuring chart topping performer T-Pain shattered records.
“It was a great night it was the largest concert we’ve had all summer here at Canalside,” Ryan Coate, General Manager at Canalside told 7 Eyewitness News.
“You know without having a ticket we used counters and security guards to click people through the gates and we clicked over 25,000 people that came into Canalside."
The venue reached the 25,000 person capacity around 8:30pm and crews began turning people away.
“It was a very popular artist. T-Pain is mainstream and has a lot of hits, we had a lot of people very diverse – young, old, different ages, colors to see T-Pain."
With the influx of people Coate says his team was prepared with extra security.
“We’ve made an investment in hiring more security forms really because of what’s going on in the world these days heightening our policies at the gate.”
But a 7 Eyewitness News viewer sent us cell phone video showing dozens of people running screaming.
Canalside's General Manager did confirm at one point as many as 1,500 people broke through a barricade and entered the concert -- but he ensured 7 Eyewitness News that Thursday night's show was safe.
“It happened, there were no injuries, there were no injuries last night. Everybody left safe, people were smiling, commenting on how great the event was, so really positive event. I think the only thing that’s most unfortunate is we couldn’t let everyone into Canalside because of capacity.”
