Pittsburgh Brewing making traffic adjustments for Cole Swindell concert

Traffic headaches from a recent car cruise at Pittsburgh Brewing in East Deer have officials there making adjustments for the facility’s biggest concert of the summer.

The brewery on Sunday night will host country music artist Cole Swindell — the headliner of the venue’s inaugural concert series.

The event comes roughly two weeks after the brewery’s “Iron City Car Cruise” with Cheswick-based Max Motive. That event featured nearly 800 vehicles on display and roughly 8,000 to 10,000 attendees. It also resulted in lengthy traffic snarls along Freeport Road and the Route 28 Expressway.

“Yes, there were traffic delays, but nothing we couldn’t learn from or fix for future events,” said Rachel Semelbauer, brewery spokeswoman. “There was also the Brian Shaw Memorial Ride going on with road closures and a summer festival at East Deer Park, which most likely contributed to the traffic.”

To alleviate traffic, officials plan an additional exit point on the back side of the property, where a secondary parking lot is located, Semelbauer said.

“We are confident we will get people in and out of our property in a timely manner for the Cole Swindell concert,” she said.

The crowd for Swindell’s concert is expected to be in the thousands. He has eight No. 1 country music singles and three more Top 10 singles. Last year, he won the Academy of Country Music’s Single of the Year award and two Song of the Year awards, one for writing and one for performance, all for his hit “She Had Me at Heads Carolina.”

Even with the traffic issues, Semelbauer said, the car show got rave reviews from the public.

“It was our first nonticketed event, and we received a lot of great feedback from people that frequently attend car cruises and how it was the best one they have been to,” she said.

Allegheny Valley Regional Police Chief Mike Naviglia said traffic was an issue, but he noted that car cruises, unlike concerts, are nonticketed events.

“We didn’t know that many spectators were going to show up,” Naviglia said. “It’s a good thing there were that many people. Creighton and Tarentum got an influx of people maybe not from the area, and that’s a good thing. The bad thing was traffic was a headache.”

He said there were no issues from previous concerts at the brewery: a Jimmy Buffett tribute band concert in June attracted roughly 3,000 people, while a concert featuring Led Zeppelin and The Doors tribute bands drew roughly that same amount.