Tate, tell your local guy he's full of it. I of course don't have any experience with the JBL stuff, however, I have a Versarray system installed at a club that has a capacity of 500. I use a single hang of four boxes in the center and two QW3's for front fill along with 4 VR218's centered. It will rip your head off.
We have some very knowledgeable and experienced guys here on LAB that have used the VR system and love it. I don't know what your local guys setup is, but if it's 3 boxes per side and he's trying to do 2000 people, well what do expect, that's not enough rig for the gig. Look at the road test section on the Versarray. Lot's of input from many there.
Tom in Baltimore