The city of Huntsville is planning a large-scale, outdoor music festival in 2024, Mayor Tommy Battle announced Tuesday at his annual state of the city address.

In an address before about 1,100 business and community leaders at the Von Braun Center, Battle outlined successes across Alabama’s largest city underscored with a theme of “marching to our own beat.”

A mid-speech performance by the Alabama A&M University marching band set the stage for the mayor’s announcement of returning a regional music festival to the Rocket City similar to Big Spring Jam, which ended in 2011 due to construction projects around the downtown park.

“One of the things we hear a lot is, ‘When are you bringing back Big Spring Jam?’” Battle said.

The new festival will take place in John Hunt Park, the city’s 428-acre greenspace in the center of town that’s home to Joe Davis Stadium, a soccer complex that annually hosts the state high school championships as well as cross country and sand volleyball venues that attract top collegiate teams from across the country.

Battle declined to share a date the city has in mind for the event but said more details will be released next month when the city council is presented a contract for approval with C3 Presents – a concert promotion group behind such festivals as Bonnaroo in southern Tennessee as well as Lollapalooza in Chicago.

The fact that the mayor announced the event while pending city council review indicates the near-certainty of its approval.

“If approved (by the city council), C3 will bring a major two-day music festival to John Hunt Park that will recreate the Big Spring Jam experience — only on a much bigger, larger and better scale,” Battle said during his speech.

The announcement garnered immediate applause from the business luncheon crowd.

“We don’t know the name yet of our festival,” Battle continued. “But with the council’s blessing, we can’t wait to listen to internationally acclaimed artists performing at Huntsville’s first large-scale music festival.”

And the audience cheered again.

The event would check multiple boxes that city leaders say makes the city more attractive. Just as the city-owned Orion Amphitheater was build, in part, as a magnet to keep young adults in Huntsville while attracting others, the music festival would help do the same while simultaneously giving visitors a new reason to travel to the Rocket City.

And from an economic development standpoint, fill hotels and restaurants across the city.

“People … being part of our community for a couple of days, spending money in our community, making up hotel room nights, spending money in our restaurants and then going out to see the festival,” Battle said. “There’s a benefit off of it but there’s also the benefit of people coming in seeing us and seeing our community, and seeing what’s about. So many people have a preconceived notion of Huntsville, ‘Alabama.’ And this music festival that we’re working with, the music scene, all that does is gets people to come in and see what we’re really about, what our community is really about.

“And when they start seeing that, they say, ‘Wow, this might be something different than what I had my preconceived notion with.’ So I’m really excited about that. I think this has been one of the greatest things we can do is to change the preconceived notions of what Huntsville, Alabama is. To change it to, ‘Hey, we’re a cool city.’”

While the music festival highlighted Battle’s speech, he spoke at length about the economic prosperity in Huntsville — reinforced with numbers reflecting that strength projected onto screens in the refurbished venue renamed the Saturn Ballroom.

• Tourism: a $2.1 million economic impact and 22,000 jobs.
• City investment: $70 million over the past year with $200 million planned over the next five years.
• Redstone Arsenal: a $27 billion economic impact on the state and about 44,000 jobs.
• Private investment: $633 million in new commercial construction over the past year.

“We have an unequal and unsurpassed passion for innovation and we boldly march toward the future,” Battle said in concluding his speech. “We are Huntsville. We dare to be different. We marched to our own beat and we set the tempo.”

This story will be updated.