Kelly McGrath’s path to general manager of the Xcel Energy Center — from planning for the Pope to 50 Cent and the Minnesota Wild

Frederick Melo, Pioneer Press
·10 min read
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Kelly McGrath took a moment between back-to-back meetings to walk the floor of the Xcel Energy Center, where Matt “Fuji” Fujinaka, director of operations, measured and chalked the spots where chairs would be deposited for last Monday night’s Nickelback concert, a nearly sold-out draw for almost 14,000 hard rock fans.

In a few days, McGrath — who was named general manager and executive director of the “X” in July — will do the same before the Sam Smith concert, the Pearl Jam concert and the Greta Van Fleet concert, the latter being a rock band that developed a modern following on social media platforms like TikTok.

“It’s great for the business,” said McGrath, who has been navigating event-based sales for the better part of 30 years, most of them at the X. “That’s translating to ticket sales. It’s hard to sell 14,000 tickets. Not every band can do it.”

Then it’s on to country artist Old Dominion, guitar legend Eric Clapton, rapper 50 Cent and comedian Dave Chappelle.

“And then we roll right into hockey season,” said McGrath, giving away a little-known fact about the delicate dance between big-name musical acts and the Minnesota Wild, the state’s professional hockey team, who have skated at the city-owned arena since it opened in 2000.

Ice never goes out during hockey season

Come mid-September, after the arena floor is flooded and frozen, decking will be rolled over the ice to accommodate the legendary musical acts, and then rolled away again for games. The ice never goes out during hockey season — concert-goers literally dance on top of it, most of them oblivious. It’s easier to shave the ice and remove spilled beer than freeze, melt and refreeze in short order for high school, college and professional hockey tournaments.

The Wild — who first landed at the newly constructed X in 2000, the same year McGrath did — host 44 home games annually, and in a promising year, playoff games as the season winds down.

“We’re trying to slide in as many concerts as we can,” McGrath said. “We have really good acoustics in the building. We want to be a preferred choice.”

The Wild do more than just play hockey in downtown St. Paul.

Under the title Minnesota Sports and Entertainment, the organization — and now McGrath herself — manages the Xcel Energy Center, the adjoining St. Paul RiverCentre convention center and the Roy Wilkins Auditorium, conference and event arenas that generate some $9.7 million annually in sales tax for the city just from tickets and concessions, not including tax revenue from hotels, bars and other recreation.

How exactly does one get to run one of the state’s most popular concert and sports venues in a market with competing event arenas like the Target Center, Target Field and U.S. Bank Stadium just across the river?

McGrath, who grew up in White Bear Lake and lives in Stillwater, suspects it has something to do with her missionary work and the many weeks she spent planning for the arrival of Pope John Paul II.

Catholic upbringing leads to a career

Her father owned a small business specializing in stainless steel products in Little Canada and her mother, a homemaker, volunteered in Catholic circles, eventually serving as the president of the National Council of Catholic Women.

McGrath attended the Hill-Murray School, a private Catholic high school in Maplewood, and then the College of St. Thomas, as the University of St. Thomas was known then, graduating with degrees in international studies and French (including a semester in Toulouse, France) and a minor in economics. Her first job out of college was with a youth ministry organization based in West St. Paul, which put her to work for a year with a dozen other young adults, driving across the U.S. in a van to put on youth retreats at Catholic parishes and Catholic schools. For 12 months, she lived out of a suitcase.

It was 1993, and Pope John Paul II was coming to Denver for World Youth Day. McGrath was placed in charge of coordinating a group of 100 people, down to the smallest logistics of their stay.

“And I just loved it — putting all these missionaries together and working out all the details, their travel, their housing, their agendas for their day, how would they get fed, what would their apparel be for recognition and branding,” she said.

Whether she realized it at the time or not, she had found her career and set herself on a gradual path toward the Minnesota Wild.

After her year of youth ministry, McGrath served as group sales manager at the Ordway Center for the Performing Arts in downtown St. Paul for three years and sold advertising as an account executive with the Minneapolis-St. Paul Business Journal in Minneapolis.

It was almost 2000, and professional hockey was returning to Minnesota after a seven-season drought. The state’s new team — the Wild — were about to skate at the newly constructed X. Then came a phone call and an invitation to meet with management.

“I had a cup of coffee, because it’s always worth exploring what someone might have as an opportunity,” said McGrath, who recalled underestimating how competitive an opening she was being invited to apply for. “And it turned out to be a good fit. I didn’t realize at the time how many people were clamoring to work for the Wild. I just know there was a lot of excitement for a new pro team, and to be part of it. I just saw it as an opportunity to get back into group sales and big events, which I loved.”

Upward bound

McGrath started as a group sales manager, the same type of work she had done at the Ordway, then became sales director in 2003, selling season tickets, suites and other group experiences.

In 2005 she transferred from direct sales to the arena side of the business, focusing on the U.S. Figure Skating Championship, the Frozen Four Men’s Division I college hockey tournament and other skating events.

By 2008 she was director of marketing and sales, adding shows like the World’s Toughest Rodeo and Disney on Ice to her sales roster, as well as four annual high school tournaments.

In 2022 her title changed to director of marketing and communications across all the publicly owned facilities that the Wild manage, including the Xcel Energy Center, the St. Paul RiverCentre and the Roy Wilkins Auditorium, though conferences and conventions are usually booked by Visit St. Paul, the city’s tourism bureau. The Wild also manage the TRIA Rink, their practice facility atop Treasure Island Center on Wabasha Street, a former Macy’s department store building.

McGrath was named general manager and executive director last month following the retirement of Jack Larson — the inaugural GM who had held the position for more than 22 years — and a national search by an internal recruiter.

“I joke when I was a hiring manager for the Wild — if someone came in and told me how much they loved hockey, that’s great, that’s a bonus,” she said. “But I preferred to hear how much they loved to sell. I certainly know the sport — I went to Hill Murray — but girls hockey did not exist as an option back then.”

McGrath is a former longtime board chair of Youth Advantage, a nonprofit based in Stillwater that provides scholarships for youth to participate in sports and music. Her husband, Wayne Petersen, serves as director of community relations and hockey partnerships for the Wild.

Competition with Minneapolis

With capacity for 14,000 to 20,000 fans depending upon the configuration, the Xcel Energy Center holds roughly as many visitors as Target Center in Minneapolis or Allianz Field in St. Paul, about half as many as the open-air Target Field in Minneapolis and far less than U.S. Bank Stadium in Minneapolis, which could shoehorn in upwards of 66,000 visitors.

Being situated so close to neighboring arenas brings some challenges, including the likelihood that big-name acts will shop around for the best deal on security and other costs, effectively playing the stadiums off each other.

“We’re two buildings in a major market that are roughly 10 miles apart,” McGrath acknowledged. “We try to differentiate ourselves with our sound, with the customer service, with our staff. A lot of people who work here are 20-year plus employees like I am. Our marketing team is very good at what they do, to sell tickets to the event.”

At City Hall, officials with the mayor’s office speak with a kind of reverence for the month of March 2022. It was that month when the X hosted state high school wrestling and hockey tournaments, the National Collegiate Hockey Conference’s Frozen Faceoff, 12 Minnesota Wild games, and musical acts Elton John, Journey and Billie Eilish.

“It seems like March, I don’t know why, everybody seems to want to find a concert date in there, too,” McGrath said.

The city returned $31.2 million in sales tax collection to the state in that month alone — the highest month on record ever recorded for sales tax collection in St. Paul. That’s on top of general revenues to hotels, restaurants, parking ramps and other public and private facilities.

Downtown TIF district

With that knowledge in mind, St. Paul recently won legislative approval to extend the life of a controversial downtown “tax increment financing” district by 10 years to the year 2033, with the goal of pooling large segments of property tax proceeds from 21 downtown blocks into $38 million of construction improvements to the RiverCentre, Xcel Energy Center and the convention center parking ramp. Ramsey County exempted itself from the arrangement, choosing to continue to collect its own tax payments.

Launched in the late 1970s under another name, the “MN Events” TIF District has until now been restricted to paying debt service on the St. Paul Housing and Redevelopment Authority bonds that covered the cost of constructing the downtown RiverCentre. The reworked TIF district won’t generate enough money to pay for a replacement to the poorly aging parking ramp on its own, but it would provide the facilities with a dedicated funding source for roof repairs, technology upgrades and other costs.

“The building is 23 years old,” McGrath said. “So we’re looking constantly at different ways we can make improvements for the fan experience. We’re putting in 5G (wireless connectivity). We have an Amazon walk-out store, where you can put your credit card in, and just leave and your credit card gets charged. You’re faster in and out and back to your seats more quickly.”

She noted an increase in grab-and-go concessions that are displayed “almost like a convenience store … so we can get people through the concessions line faster,” she said.

In 2019, Wild owner and chairman Craig Leipold made a commitment to keep the team at the X through at least the year 2035, a decade longer than previously agreed to, in exchange for a steep break in rent. City officials said at the time that St. Paul would not lose money on the deal, as the rents pay off construction bonds whose repayment terms had been renegotiated.

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