PITTSBURG, Kan. – This September, roughly 5,000 people will be on the campus of Pitt State, but they won’t be there to attend classes.

The campus of Pittsburg State University is home to thousands of students every year. This September, it will play host to the first ever Four States Music Festival, featuring a number of country music artists. Nick Noland is the owner of social house entertainment, which is putting on the festival. Noland says “You know, we just thought it was a great opportunity, you know, and I think there had been some kind of previous conversations where Pitt State wanted to do something like this but didn’t maybe know exactly how to do it or have the right partner, and I stepped in and met Pitt State and just really kind of hit it off and our visions were very much aligned and we were off to the races.”

Noland says that made Pitt State a perfect fit for the festival and provided just what they were looking for in a venue. “So, we’re building it in the field right next to the football stadium there at Pitt State, so really, it gives us a blank canvas to start with to really build out kind of what we had envisioned.”

One concern that’s come up, is alcohol on the campus. Pitt State President Dr. Steve Scott says they’re already prepared. “We sell alcohol at our football games now, so that’s not anything new to us, when I was here as a student, we used to sell alcohol in the student center, so sometimes these things come full circle, but I would say that we take that particular element of the shows seriously and will be doing our due diligence leading up to the show to make sure that that’s done appropriately.”

Deputy City Manager Jay Byers says all these visitors will have a big impact on the city as well. “Well, obviously anytime you have 5,000 people in your town, you have sales tax implications, they will buy food, they will buy gas and things like that and a lot of them will probably stay overnight in the hotels, so all of that has a very strong financial implication for the city.”

Noland says there’ll be some contributions back to Pitt State from the festival. Tickets are on sale now. For more information, click here.

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