New Dallas Cowboys stadium official ensures a fan-friendly experience

Paul Turner won't get credit or blame for how the Dallas Cowboys play this fall or the design of the team's $1.1 billion stadium.

Paul Turner

But most everything else happening at the new stadium will fall on the shoulders of this former Philadelphia Eagles staffer. As the Cowboys' game day experience guru, Turner was hired to ensure that nothing in the parking lots or concourses detracts from fans' enjoyment of the game.

"We're the team off the field," he said. "We can't affect what happens between the white lines, but we contribute to all the other experiences on game day."

Turner, who was hired last summer as director of event operations to oversee responsibilities ranging from the concession stand to restroom lines, signed on to a job that's mostly invisible to the public.

For his job, he literally traces the footsteps of a hypothetical fan from the parking lot to the seats. He tries to guess where the fans' eyes will naturally go so he can help place the more 3,000 "wayfinding" signs.

So far, he's wandered the construction site, pored over stadium maps and marked the spots where each of the 1,500-plus employees will be stationed on game day.

"Everything is mapped out," Turner said. "It's like diagramming a football play. You make sure everyone has a position and is in position."

Turner was hired from the Eagles, where he worked as event services manager from 2004 to 2008. He also held a similar position at the Portland Trail Blazers' basketball arena.

In Philadelphia, Turner started the year after Lincoln Financial Field opened. This time, he'll have nearly a year to plan for the opening of the Cowboys, stadium. The first event – which hasn't been announced – is expected in June.

Leonard Bonacci, director of event operations and Turner's former boss in Philadelphia, said the Cowboys made a smart hire. He said Turner has the analytical mind and temperament for such a challenge.

"It's like you're the mayor of a small city," Bonacci said.

Unlike a mayor, this job doesn't get much publicity or credit from the outside world. And when it does, that's not always a good thing, said Dexter King, CEO of Coppell-based International Association of Assembly Managers.

"People recognize when they've experienced a hassle," he said. "I don't know that they always notice when everything is so great. You don't want them to experience anything but great. You want everyone to see it as a seamless experience."

Turner said his job requires a combination of experience and the ability to see the stadium with fresh eyes. One of the hardest tasks is stripping away his knowledge of the stadium.

"It's trying to put myself in the shoes of that guest and walk around and see things as they would see them," Turner said.

He said he sometimes watches people in public places to study where they look and how they interact with their surroundings. Those observations as well as practical experience with the ebb and flow of crowds during a football game help him understand the "choreography" of staff placement.

Turner said he knows that fans will rush to the concession stands and restrooms at halftime.

"As people queue up for the restrooms, we want to make sure that's an orderly process and they're not interfering with a concession line," he said.

When additional concession stands open, Turner said he already knows that extra staff will be needed to direct the lines and make sure they don't stretch into the concourses and choke the traffic flow.

"We don't want to invent these things on the fly or react to guest needs," he said. "Our job is to anticipate them and design it into the operations."

Technology also is giving him new tools, Turner said. He is setting up a phone number that will allow fans to send a text message to the Cowboys and report troublemakers at the stadium.

Staff also will have two-way pagers to allow them to quickly call a dispatcher for help.

"All of that activity gets logged, so we're tracking the different things that are happening throughout the course of a game," Turner said. "That gives us the data that we need to analyze our operations."

Turner has been working with sports facilities for nearly a decade, but he got his start in a less rough-and-tumble environment. In the early 1990s, he was house manager for the Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts in Southern California and handled the guest services for people more likely to be wearing ties than football jerseys.

"I went from Martha Graham to monster trucks," Turner said about this switch to arena management a few years later.

The change might sound jarring, he said, but the work is remarkably similar. Sports are entertainment of a different sort.

"Just like a stage, everything is engineered so that you as an audience member only see what was designed to be seen," Turner said about sports. "It's a show. It's a performance."

As entertainment, sports have to compete for dollars and leisure time with many other options from increasingly demanding consumers, King said.

"We're a society that wants it now and wants it in a certain way," he said. "Our culture today is much more sophisticated in how they pick and choose than they were 25 years ago."

Turner said he takes the approach that every detail matters – even the small ones. He said he expects an employee who sees a messy condiment stand to straighten it up, even if that isn't his or her job.

That's an approach made famous by the Walt Disney Co., where Turner graduated from the company's customer service program. At Disney, top executives are expected to pick up trash when they see it on the ground at one of the company's theme parks, although Turner said he adopted that philosophy before he took its classes.

Turner said that in the coming months, the initial planning for the Cowboys stadium will wrap up, and June will be the first chance to test a year's worth of work.