You could barely see the red ribbon that city and county officials were about to cut. So many people had crowded into the first floor of Durham's Performing Arts Center that children climbed on shoulders to see and even adults squeezed where they could to get a glimpse.

"A theater adds to our ‘coolness,' if you will," said Bill Kalhkof, President of Downtown Durham Inc. "Therefore, it's easier to get people to invest in Downtown."

The DPAC officially opened Monday night. People expect it to bring thousands into downtown Durham.

"About 220,000 a year - initially," said Reyn Bowman, CEO of the Durham Convention and Visitors Bureau. "This is definitely a visitor feature."

The Performing Arts Center is the largest in South and North Carolina. There are 2,800 seats. Taxes paid for the $44 million it took to build the 29,500 square foot structure.

Some got a sneak-peek at the theater the night before, when B.B. King performed the first show at DPAC.

"I had a couple patrons in here from Raleigh who don't come into Durham very often who were actually really excited," said Sean Slane, who works at Tyler's Restaurant & Taproom across the street. "They didn't know any of this was here at the American Tobacco Campus."

People expect places like the American Tobacco District to benefit from the thousands expected to come here to the performing arts center.

"We did business numbers that we normally wouldn't do on a Sunday night for this time of year," Slane said. "On a Sunday night coming off of a holiday weekend, I would say that was definitely out of the ordinary."