LANCASTER COUNTY, Pa. (WHTM) — Asked who’s on stage in Studio 1 — basically a stadium with a concert stage, complete with lights and a sound system and all the rest of it, but minus the stadium — Andrea Shirk doesn’t hesitate.

“Elvis,” Shirk says. “Have you ever heard of him?”

Obviously — never mind her straight-face deadpan — Shirk, CEO of Rock Lititz, is joking. But the idea she’ll reveal who actually is practicing inside, likely for an upcoming tour, is just as far-fetched as the idea it could be Elvis Presley, considering… well, you know why it can’t be him.

The live events industry — concerts and so forth — is its own world. Within that world is an even more niche subindustry specializing in live event rehearsals.

Lancaster County — best known outside the region for its Amish culture and craftsman — long had a cluster of businesses catering to the live events industry (including — as it turns out — some of those Amish craftsman).

Lancaster is located in what is, for these purposes, a just-right location: a rather short 90-minute-to-three-hour drive from big cities like New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington, D.C., with all their first-tier concert venues, but far enough that land is cheaper and more plentiful than in the cities.

Lititz is a borough within the county, although technically, Rock Lititz is outside the borough in nearby Warwick Township.

The industry suppliers in the area started hearing the same question from entertainers and everyone who supports them.

“Hey, can we practice closer to you, because it’s easier to fix things — it’s easy to make adjustments on the fly when we are within proximity to critical vendors,” Shirk said, characterizing what they were hearing. “So we started dreaming of like, ‘Well, why don’t we just bring that rehearsal space here?’”

So they did.

Rock Lititz opened in 2014. The early days were dicey: Although rather remote, the campus wasn’t remote enough to avoid “torturing” neighbors with noise.

“As everyone knows,” Shirk concedes — everyone around here, at least — “we had to learn how to soundproof in the beginning.”

By all accounts, they did, and neighbors have voiced few complaints during the past decade.

Today — still growing — Rock Lititz has 700,000 square feet of indoor space on a 150-acre campus. On the campus are about 40 industry suppliers, everyone from folks who can figure out how to hang a band’s speakers so sound and safety are both flawless, to an accounting firm that specializes in supporting acts that sell concert tickets and pay local expenses in numerous countries and currencies.

There’s a Rock Lititz-branded on-campus hotel with 140 rooms and two penthouse suites, where the restaurant and bar stay open until the wee hours because performers and their crews don’t stop practicing until then.

Sometimes crews leave something interesting behind.

“It’s not uncommon that there’s a really unique design set piece on some world-famous tour that was done by a small local Amish company within Lancaster County,” Shirk said.

A big part of what Rock Lititz sells is discretion and confidentiality, so just as Shirk refuses to name clients (even if everyone kind of assumes there’s a reason a star as big as Taylor Swift has been seen in Lancaster County, of all places), she won’t confirm what those set pieces are — which doesn’t stop a visitor from observing a big Venus flytrap looks a lot like one from the on-stage production of “Little Shop of Horrors,” or that a mock spaceship sure looks a lot like one that carried Lady Gaga through the air at concerts while she was on tour.

Rock Lititz is also a true “campus” in the more traditional sense. Students get degrees at the Academy of Live Technology, which works with the Pennsylvania College of Art and Design.

There’s lifelong learning, too. Nathaniel Hare attended a “leadership summit,” which included most of the independent Rock Lititz vendors.

“It’s like I’d never left grad school,” said Hare, a manager with decades of experience. “You know, there’s always some new thing to learn and be challenged on.”

And although Shirk long liked to claim there was nothing quite like Rock Lititz, she’ll concede that’s no longer true — and that’s fine with her.

“We had a ton of country artists coming up to Lititz and realizing the demand down there and the need there,” Shirk said. “Surprisingly, enough, was really no real large place to rehearse in Nashville.”

“Was.” Past tense. Now there is: Rock Nashville, which already has 600,000 square feet of indoor space (and knew how to soundproof from day one).

“It’s funny, because it’s Lititz,” Shirk said — a place few people outside the region know — “and then it’s Nashville, right? So what a cool combination.”

Copyright 2026 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to ABC27.