Convention Insider with Director of Operations Marcia Lee Kelly
by Marcia Lee Kelly
The Quicken Loans Arena is Cleveland’s center for entertainment. It hosts concerts, events, Lake Erie Monsters hockey in the Calder Cup Final, and last but certainly not least, the Cavaliers in the 2016 NBA Finals. I, however, can’t wait until these events are all over for the month of June. Why? Well, when it comes to planning the Republican National Convention, time is of the essence.
As the Director of Operations for the Republican National Convention, my job is to make sure the Quicken Loans Arena (the Q) is transformed from the home of the Cavaliers, to the stage where we will nominate the Republican candidate for President. This task requires quite a lot of “maintenance” to the Q. Traditionally, it takes around 6 weeks to complete. In an ideal world, we’d like to have 8 weeks. For the first time in modern Convention history, we could be working with less than 4.
To succeed, my team and I will have to know every inch, every nook and every cranny in each of our venues. We will have to find every piece of signage that needs to be replaced or covered with our own Convention branding. We have to know the exact number of seats that must be removed to build the stage where speakers will address the approximately 20,000 people in the arena and millions around the world. Sound studies must be done, showers must be converted into office space, check points to enter the secured perimeter must be established, caterers must have space to prepare their imaginative creations, and much, much more. And that’s just the Q.
This year, we have double the venues we’ve ever used before. First we have Freedom Plaza, an outdoor space that will house a delegate marketplace and outdoor caterers for Convention-goers to shop, drink, and enjoy. Progressive Field will host hospitality spaces and events. Media Operations will coordinate the Huntington Convention Center, just eight blocks away, which will serve as media workspace and must be built out into space that can be allocated to the more than 15,000 media who will be here in Cleveland that week. We are even building out the Gateway East structure into a combination of staff offices, hospitality spaces, and the newly themed Media Row. Each of these has their own unique challenges, and there is a lot of work to be done in under 50 days, but after a year and a half of planning, we are ready.
The Republican National Convention is one of the world’s biggest stages. It takes a tremendous effort to transform an arena that is typically used for basketball and concerts into a forum for a national party to showcase our nominee to the world. The past year of mapping out even the smallest of utility closets in this arena will pay off when we are in crunch time. In this business, you always have to plan for the latest possible move-in date or scenario so with the possibility that the Cavs could be in the finals, we’ve been preparing. That’s how we will be ready in time to put on the most captivating Convention the country has ever seen.
