YES, You CAN Build a Tent in a Parking Lot!

From the desk of: Jessica Stevenson

When our lovely client, YMCA of the North Shore said to us, “we want to have our gala at our Beverly MA location, but it’s small and we’re worried we won’t be able to host all our guests…. Can you help us figure it out?” Well, frankly, hearing that was like music to our ears. You have an event-related problem and you’re asking us to help??? YES, PLEASE!

Loving a good challenge, and naturally coming from a place of “YES WE CAN”, AE went on site to investigate possible solutions to the presented problem. First thing we noticed… wow, this is a BIG parking lot!!

With our creative hats on, we figured out just how we can bring their event to life at their desired location. And, with our construction hats on, we got to building an enormous tenting structure in the parking lot!

As always, we started this complicated project with safety in mind! Getting Dig Safe out to ensure we don’t clip gas lines, figuring out our power pull so we didn’t overload the grid, locating a great and safe space for our generator, and implementing a plan for redirecting traffic so YMCA members could still utilize the facilities while we built our structure.  

And when I mean structure… we erected a 40’ x 20’ registration tent, a 90’ x 50’ cocktail tent, a 20’ x 80’ immersive tunnel for guests to travel from cocktails to dinner, programing and dancing, a 160’ x 80’ main celebration tent – and of course you can’t forget the other important details like building a kitchen for your caterer, creating a storage location and AV hub, and of course an area for your luxury restroom trailer!

Working with vendors who also love a good challenge and come from a place of “YES WE CAN!” certainly helps (huge shout out to A Tent 4 Rent.)

It takes a village, always, to actualize our client’s dreams and wishes…. Especially when building an ACTUAL village!

Photos below: Allegro Photography