Final Four weekend at Discovery Green will be like nothing the young park has ever seen.

The 12-acre park, situated near the George R. Brown Convention Center, will be fenced for the free concert series, which includes A-list headliners like Kings of Leon and Kenny Chesney, and NCAA organizers are expecting fans to come out in the tens of thousands. Attendees will enter security checkpoints at any of four gates and will be subject to pat down.

Discovery Green programming director Susanne Theis and Final Four spokesman Doug Hall tell CultureMap that the park's capacity is less about the numbers than the feeling of safety officials, which include everyone from HPD and HFD to Homeland Security.

"It depends on how the crowd is behaving — whether they're spread out," Theis says.

The NCAA has set up video monitors throughout the park so that the action on-stage can be seen even by those who aren't standing near it, and the fountain has been covered and converted to a food court with monitors for easy viewing.

"If people are spread out, we can accommodate a lot more than if everyone crowds on Jones Lawn," Theis says.

When and if the park reaches capacity will be decided by Discovery Green president Barry Mandel and representatives of both the Houston Fire Department and the Houston Police Department. If two of three of those people decide the park is at capacity, the gates will be closed.

In anticipation of overflow, the NCAA has set up a parking lot with video monitors and amenities like concessions and portable bathrooms at the intersection of Avenida de las Americas and Walker streets. That area can hold several thousand additional people, who should be able to hear the music from the adjacent park, Theis says. The streets surrounding Discovery Green will be closed.

People are not encouraged to arrive early, as gates will open only around a half hour before the first concert each day (times vary) and there are no bathrooms or other amenities outside of the gates. Once you're in the gates, you cannot leave and come back.

Although he wouldn't discuss specific numbers, Hall says he's confident in the security the NCAA has employed and the "huge amount of coordination" that's taken place.

"We're well-prepared for a massive turnout," he says.

Theis says that though the park has never experienced an event this big, "We are really confident, based on how people act most of the time in the park, that if they come to have fun and relax it'll be a really successful event."

The Big Dance concert series runs from April 1 to April 3; a full schedule of events can be found here.