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About a year ago, thousands of people made history in Asheville — mostly by standing in the same place at the same time.

The June concert by the country duo Florida Georgia Line drew about 12,000 people to McCormick Field, the Asheville Tourists’ stadium, and became the largest single event ever recorded in the city.

But in many other cities, the gathering wouldn’t have been all that remarkable. In Knoxville, Garth Brooks recently drew an average of about 12,500 fans a night during a four-performance concert series at Thompson-Boling Arena. Greenville’s White Oak Amphitheater seats more than 7,000 people and provides space for an additional 5,000 on the lawn.

So what’s holding Asheville back? There’s just no place to put all those people — at least, not on a regular basis.

Downtown After 5 draws one of Asheville’s largest crowds with an average of 7,500 people per event, but it isn’t able to offer bands the benefit of a permanent stage.

Asheville does have a couple of arena spaces. Explore Asheville Arena in the U.S. Cellular Center contains a 7,200-person arena that has hosted concerts in the past, but there’s no permanent stage, and no concerts are currently scheduled.

UNC Asheville also has an arena capable of hosting 3,800 that books a concert occasionally (most recently, a Brandon Heath concert that was scheduled there in May was canceled). A 3,000 person arena at the WNC Agricultural Center has a dirt floor, making it more suitable for rodeos than musicians.

If a big band were dead set on coming to Asheville, there are places they could play. But with the dirt floors and gymnasium seating involved, it just doesn’t happen all that often.

So is McCormick Field another of these infrequent concert spaces?

The Florida Georgia Line concert was something of a one-time event. The Asheville Tourists haven’t ruled out hosting something similar, but Brian DeWine, president and owner, said nothing like that is on the books now.

“Florida Georgia Line approached us,” he said. “They were on a baseball ballpark tour, so they had a promoter who knew how to go into a ballpark and convert it into a concert stage. That’s crucial. We would never even consider it if there was not a promoter involved who had ballpark experience.”

DeWine said lots of people have asked about the possibility of a concert, but no one with the equipment to convert the ballpark or even access to the band has approached him.

Those anticipating another big concert will have quite a wait ahead of them. But several groups want to end the wait. They hope to expand Asheville’s performance spaces — some in capacity, some in the caliber of the acts they book. Whether those projects materialize depends on their ability to raise money and garner public support.

By the city, for the city?

If anyone can create a large performance space in Asheville, it’s probably Pat Whalen. He’s the president of Public Interest Projects, the development company founded by philanthropist Julian Price in 1990 that has provided support to 18 downtown businesses and renovated thousands of square feet of retail, office and housing space.

He also owns The Orange Peel, Asheville’s largest privately-owned indoor concert venue with a capacity of 1,100 people.

About two years ago, he started gauging interest in a project tentatively called the Asheville Amphitheater. The space, which he envisions near the river, would be designed to host nationally touring acts and audiences of 3,000-5,000 people.

He said he’s watched Asheville grow over the years from Nowheresville to a national destination for live music. In April, the website Thrilllist featured Asheville on its compilation, America’s 12 Greatest Music Cities.

“Nobody would have said that 15 or 20 years ago,” Whalen said. “The character of the community is such that touring artists like to come here (and) people will drive a four- or five-hour radius to come see a show.”

Although he hasn’t commissioned an economic impact study yet, Whalen estimates such a facility would serve more than 150,000 people every year from Asheville and beyond and result in millions of dollars of additional spending in the community.

It would also cost $6-8 million to build.

Whalen has pitched the project to the city, the county and the Tourism Development Authority, but so far, no group has signed on as a partner. The closest ally Whalen has found is RiverLink, a nonprofit in the River Arts District with interest on building a similar facility on the property it owns on Amboy Road, Karen Cragnolin Park, which is currently being remediated.

“We have great national voices in the live music industry that would love to see this happen in Asheville and would love to make it happen, but without the public sector buy-in, I’m not sure how successful it would be,” Whalen said.

Those national voices include Ashley Capps, who owns AC Entertainment, the company that books some of the country’s most prominent music festivals, including Bonnaroo and Forecastle, and manages the Tennessee and Bijou theaters in Knoxville. Capps also books shows at The Orange Peel.

“I think a great 5,000-6,000 capacity amphitheater could do well in Asheville, but it would have to be a well-designed facility that is flexible enough to support many different uses as a venue for the symphony and various other community organizations,” he said. “So all in all, it would really need to be a community effort if it were to be successful. But, yes, we would be very interested in being a major part of that.”

In short, the amphitheater would have to be built right with attention to all the amenities performers require.

The public support that Capps and Whalen envision has not been quick in coming — if it’s coming at all.

Whalen last met with the city more than a year ago.

“What I was advised is that the city was not in a position to help with a project, but they might be able to help if we had the county and Tourism Development Authority involved, but it was all very vague and not very encouraging,” he said, noting that the city faces tough financial circumstances as the result of recent tax changes.

So Whalen went to the county. In January, he presented his ideas to the Board of Commissioners.

“We asked them to join us in just doing the feasibility study on whether this was a good idea for the community or not, and I’ve not heard anything on the county’s part,” he said.

The paperwork that went along with the presentation asked for a funding dollar amount, so Whalen suggested $50,000 to hire analysts and architects.

On June 16, Buncombe County adopted a budget that did not fund Whalen’s request.

“We didn’t do a lot in that area,” said County Manager Wanda Greene, pointing out that most other arts and entertainment projects didn’t receive funding. “That’s just not one of our core services.”

The county focuses mostly on funding health and human services, public safety and education, she explained.

So where does that leave the Asheville Amphitheater?

“It may just not be the time right now given the different balls that local government is trying to juggle,” Whalen said.

Going it alone

Whalen said the lack of public sector support for the Asheville Amphitheater isn’t a deal breaker, but it is a concern.

Karen Cragnolin, executive director of RiverLink, remains unfazed. She’s been working with Asheville’s waterways for nearly 30 years, and she’s done harder things than building an amphitheater: rerouting a mile-and-a-half of the Swanannoa River to reduce sediment, for example.

She said the public sector isn’t crucial to the project. “We hope at some point in time, they will contribute to it, but we’re not asking them to participate right now financially,” she said. “Hopefully this fall, we’ll get a clean bill of health on the property and we can start that process.”

At the Amboy Road site that could serve as the amphitheater’s location, RiverLink has been working with a company from Belgium, deploying bacteria to clean up toxins that were deposited there during its former life as a junkyard. Cragnolin said that of the 25 problem areas on the 6-acre site, 24 are now clean.

RiverLink isn’t in a hurry to build the amphitheater, but Cragnolin does foresee the need to relocate RiverMusic, the nonprofit’s summer event series, as a city-led road rerouting project gets underway in the coming years. She said the organization is “definitely in the planning stages” and has talked with potential partners.

And since they’re going to move the concert space, why not make it better?

“The music industry is exploding,” she said. “It’s a historic, authentic industry in Western North Carolina.”

The amphitheater would complement the amenities that already exist along the river.

“In one day, you could be at the velodrome at Carrier Park and ride your bike down to the concert, or you could be boating on the river and pull up to the concert,” she said.

RiverLink has already earmarked a $25,000 award from the Garden Club of America to create plans for the site, she said. That work will start just as soon as the remediation of the land is complete — hopefully later this year.

Taking it inside

Part of what defines an amphitheater is its open-air environment, but not everyone wants to connect with the outdoors during a production, however. Off-Broadway plays typically come to indoor venues.

For 10 years, an initiative called the Performance Center of Asheville has worked to bring an indoor venue to Asheville for both music and theater production.

The proposed project would be smaller than the amphitheaters with 2,000 seats — fewer than Thomas Wolfe Auditorium — but the modern systems inside would be designed to attract professional groups, according to Michael Stoll, the president of the board of the Performance Center of Asheville.

Backstage, Thomas Wolfe Auditorium is rigged with hemp ropes and sandbags. It’s one of the few remaining “hemp houses,” as these types of theaters are called, in the country. The archaic system shows its age. It was christened in 1975, but the original structure dates back to 1939.

An improved performing arts center could attract the best talent in the nation to Asheville, Stoll said, including off-Broadway plays and nationally touring acts, the sort of performances that take place at the Peace Center in Greenville. This fall in its 2,100 seat hall, the Peace Center will host Willie Nelson and Jackson Browne as well as a touring stage adaptation of “Dirty Dancing” and “Jersey Boys.”

“Our objective is to turn the traffic around,” Stoll said. “So many people go to the Peace Center to see music concerts or to see Broadway plays. We’d like to turn that around and have them stay here in Western North Carolina.”

The project saw traction with local government in 2008 when the city set aside 2.4 acres near City Hall for the project, but the Performance Center of Asheville was unable to begin building, and the resolution that created the deal expired in 2013.

Since then, local government hasn’t made any promises, although Stoll said their cooperation is crucial to creating that high-dollar space. It would probably cost $55 million to build.

Stoll met with the county earlier this year to present his ideas, but he hasn’t been in touch with the commissioners since. A $28 million funding request on behalf of the performance center will not be funded in fiscal year 2016, the county confirmed in June.

The performance center is in talks with a new donor who could provide the necessary property, Stoll said, but he’s not certain when those details will be ready to announce.

“I will say they have a good bit of credibility in the community,” he said, confirming that the name would sound familiar to many. “Property is not enough. It requires a leadership component. I hope that component we will have also with this newest piece of property.”

Where could the big acts go?

Nationally touring talents — the sort that play on pop radio — look to play big spaces in big cities. Florida Georgia Line, which played Asheville’s largest concert last year at McCormick Field, happened to be looking to play ballparks, so they chose Asheville.

Would other big acts come here if Asheville had the space? Promoter Ashley Capps said a 12,000-person concert like the one with Florida Georgia Line probably would not be a regular occurrence, but a 6,000-person concert seems realistic.

“To be honest, I don’t really think one could justify a large arena in the market — one that draws 12,000 people or more — because there are relatively few artists who can do those numbers and most of them tend to focus on playing the larger markets,” he said.

He said he thinks Asheville could draw nationally known bands with the right space, though. An outdoor amphitheater would also make for successful music festivals here, he said.

Several initiatives to bring a big venue to Asheville are underway. Here’s a primer:

•McCormick Field: The Asheville Tourists stadium is a place for baseball first and foremost, and Brian DeWine, president and owner, said it will stay that way. However, if a promoter has the equipment and skills to temporarily convert it into a concert space for 12,000, DeWine said the Tourists will probably oblige. Errors could result in $300,000 worth of turf refurbishment.

•The Asheville Amphitheater: Pat Whalen’s Public Interest Projects hopes to build a 3,000- to 5,000-person outdoor amphitheater on the riverfront, but the group is having a hard time garnering public support for the project, which would cost an estimated $6 million – $8 million to build.

•RiverLink amphitheater on Amboy Road: The nonprofit RiverLink thinks Karen Cragnolin Park, the 6-acre property which is currently being remediated on Amboy Road, would be a great spot for an amphitheater. The group has earmarked money for planning efforts, which could begin in the fall.

•The Performance Center of Asheville: The smallest proposed space is the indoor Performance Center of Asheville, which could host 2,000 people in a state-of-the-art facility. The group hopes to attract Broadway productions and nationally touring acts, much like the Peace Center in Greenville. That project has been in the planning stages for about a decade.

•Salvage Station: Danny McClinton of Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria purchased seven acres on Riverside Drive last year and hopes to convert them into an outdoor concert space, but the scale of that project is smaller than some of the other amphitheater concepts. McClinton said the property would host about 1,500 concert-goers in the early days, and bands would play from stages made out of shipping containers.