Officially opened to the public in August 2022, the MGM Music Hall at Fenway is a 5,009-seat music venue located in the northeast corner of Boston’s famed Fenway Park baseball complex. Owned by Fenway Sports Group and operated by Live Nation Entertainment, the four-level, 91,500-square-foot, state-of-the-art venue has hosted mayoral speeches; headline musicians such as Sting, James Taylor, Lil Nas X, Cyndi Lauper, Macklemore, Kings of Leon and Bruno Mars; and comedians such as Adam Sandler, Bill Maher and John Oliver since opening three years ago.

Long known as “the beating heart of Boston” based on such iconic landmarks as Fenway Park (home of the Boston Red Sox) and the area’s growing range of vibrant restaurants, shops and other cultural attractions, the Fenway district is also home to the MGM Music Hall at Fenway, which first broke ground in 2019. Norwood, Mass.-based Gaston Electrical Co. Inc., an Emcor company, worked on the music hall and several newly renovated customer-facing parts of Fenway Park.

“Gaston Electrical is a full-service electrical contracting firm with specialties in electrical construction, fire alarm, service and low-­voltage applications,” said James Reen, Gaston Electrical’s president and CEO. “We have about 300 employees and focus largely on the Boston-Cambridge area, but we also work throughout the state of Massachusetts and the entire New England region.

“We were brought into the MGM Music Hall project by the general contractor, Gilbane Building Co. [Providence, R.I.], for whom we’ve done specialty projects over the past 10–15 years. In the summer of 2019, our colleagues at Gilbane had drawings for the music hall that were 50%–60% complete, and they asked us to assist them in scheduling and budgeting,” he said. “We submitted budgets, they chose Gaston Electrical over a couple of other competitors, and we proceeded to provide design-assist services on-site and complete the budget over time.”

“We met weekly with Gilbane’s electrical engineers to help them reduce costs and ensure that everything was being installed efficiently,” said Brandon Soares, general foreman at Gaston Electrical.

Soares noted that the space on which MGM Music Hall was ultimately built was originally occupied by an old structure behind Fenway Park called the Laundry Building, which served as a parking garage and loading area for the stadium’s back office. 

“To make room for the new Music Hall, the parking garage area was demolished, but half of the original structure—which contained a restaurant, concourse, restrooms and a Boston Red Sox radio broadcasting station—was kept in order to blend the old with the new construction being built,” he said.

With up to 40 Gaston Electrical crew members on the job at the height of the project, the team began work in October 2019 and successfully finished in summer 2022—but not everything turned out to be a walk in the (ball) park.

Phase 1: Challenges abound

“After the construction team demolished half of the old building, our next steps were to remove the main electric room, relocate all of the existing circuits and refeed everything,” Soares said. “Our team was asked to come in and investigate how to keep the existing Red Sox electrical services up and running, given that we demoed out this critical room and relocated the Eversource vault (the local utility’s high-voltage service coming into the building) to a new location in order to hit our target on the project’s first of three phases, which was the Red Sox’s Opening Day at the stadium in April 2020.”

In March 2020, however, the COVID-19 pandemic gripped the world and halted the normal flow of life, work and activities.

“Due to the pandemic, the 2020 Major League Baseball season started at the end of July, and we didn’t resume work on-site until September 2020, when the ballpark was finally allowed a certain number of occupants once again,” Soares said. “We proceeded to investigate connections to the Red Sox restaurant, radio station, concourse bathrooms and concession stands as part of Phase 1 of the project, but with over 100 years of electrical additions, subtractions and other changes made in that vintage space, it was a challenge that took some time to figure out.”

The crew successfully completed those efforts in time for Fenway Park’s 2021 Opening Day the following April, when the 37,750-seat stadium once again welcomed eager fans for a full baseball season.

The outside of MGM Music Hall at Fenway.

Phase 2: Take me out to the ball game

Gaston Electrical then moved on to Phase 2, which involved “Fenway Park Improvements” within the new vertical expansion.

“Though the previous loading dock for Fenway Park contained just one bay, we constructed a brand-new loading dock for the ball park that contained five bays and all new lighting, power and fire alarms in time for 2021 Opening Day,” Soares said.

“We proceeded to turn the former parking garage into space that housed coolers, food storage, a concession kitchen and some office space—all with full new electrical service,” Soares said. 

The team also expanded the existing restaurant kitchen into one that was four times bigger. “We wired and installed a broad range of kitchen equipment and appliances from a variety of different vendors and also wired and installed all of the compressors, hood systems that protect workers, Ansul fire suppression systems to extinguish fires and GFCI protection to prevent the risk of shock,” he said. 

Other activities were within Gaston Electrical’s purview. 

“We upgraded the chiller plant and mechanical spaces that housed cooling and heating equipment for the new building, which involved a lot of distribution and connection work in very tight spaces under extreme time constraints,” Soares said. “We also oversaw direct connections to the bleacher overlook in Fenway Park’s right field, where fans can access the concession area, food, bar, bathrooms, Red Sox Sports Talk Radio Studio and high-top seating areas to watch the game.

“Finally, a function space was added to the stadium, which featured a rooftop deck on the top floor of the vertical expansion that people can rent out,” Soares said. “Within that space, we installed high-end audiovisual capabilities and lighting that changes colors, and we also outfitted a kitchen for that space with lighting, fire alarms and more.”

Team members from Gaston Electrical pose with Sam Kennedy, president and CEO of the Boston Red Sox, in front of the new building skeleton for the MGM Music Hall at Fenway.

Phase 3: Let the music play

With those activities successfully completed, the team turned to Phase 3: work on the new MGM Music Hall at Fenway.

“Though we had crews working at both Fenway Park and MGM Music Hall at all times, because certain aspects of these projects were interconnected, we then focused on meeting our Phase 3 deadline in order to enable the Music Hall to open in July 2022,” Soares said. “This state-of-the-art space featured tons of high-tech general and proscenium LED lighting throughout the space, as well as accent lighting built into railings, bar tops and walls.” 

Gaston Electrical also installed multiple drivers and lighting control systems for every light in the building, which were provided by entertainment lighting provider Bandit Lites, Knoxville, Tenn.

“We also wired and installed everything to support the Music Hall’s five kitchens, 11 bars, numerous digital blade signs on the exterior of the building and smoke control system in the event of a fire, including large exhaust fans in the roof as part of the structure’s life safety system,” Soares said, adding that the team successfully finished in time for the new venue to open as scheduled.

Construction of the MGM Music Hall at Fenway was finished right on schedule, in time for its official opening in August 2022.

Lessons learned

Looking back on the project, Soares said that tight timetables were among the key challenges they had to overcome.

“During many weeks, we were working six days a week within a small footprint and alongside a lot of other vendors,” Soares said. “To their credit, our colleagues at Gilbane developed a detailed plan to help ensure that we had everything we needed—where and when we needed it—and a lot of the lighting, power and piping products we needed came on wheels and were prefabricated in our prefab shop so that we could get in and out.” 

Gaston Electrical laid out every light fixture with Total Station from Trimble, Westminster, Colo., to ensure workers knew exactly where they needed to mount a box or hang a light. 

“There were many angles in the spaces we were working in, so we needed it in a 3D model to ensure that everything lined up perfectly, looked right and could be installed correctly,” Soares said.

Despite the pandemic-era time frame of the project, “we luckily didn’t experience delivery snags with any products, as we’d ordered many of them before the brunt of COVID hit,” Soares said, noting that while pandemic safety protocols such as social distancing and sanitization were challenging for crew members during Phase 1 of the project, they were lifted soon after. 

“Tight spaces and deadlines were our biggest challenges, as well as the weather, because the spaces we worked in were open to the elements as the facility was being built. We’re famous for our rough New England winters and cold wind,” he said, adding that “the winds coming through Fenway Park feel even colder.”

As for lessons learned, preplanning and functional prefabrication made the job go smoothly, Soares said of the three-year project. “Both Fenway Park’s new vertical expansion and MGM Music Hall are beautiful Class A spaces that everyone will enjoy—and where every seat [has] a great view,” he said.

“For our firm, this was an extremely detailed job that really set a new bar in terms of challenging, highly technical projects but, at the same time, it was an amazing upgrade and a very cool experience,” Soares said. “Our Gaston crew of top-tier contractors and Local 103 IBEW electricians did a fantastic, high-quality job that was run safely and turned out great.”

According to Soares, as a lifelong Red Sox fan, “this project was step one of a lot of new construction and revitalization going on around the ball park, which is changing the landscape in a positive way, and it’s exciting to see.”

“This was a very high-profile project at a truly historic site,” Reen, also a Red Sox fan, said, “and Gaston Electrical is excited and proud to have been a part of it.”

Gaston electrical Co. Inc. / mgm music hall at fenway