More details emerge about Huntsvilleâs planned outdoor music festival
The first details of a two-day outdoor music festival in Huntsville revealed Tuesday that the first event is not expected to take place until 2025.
The information is included in a contract with music promotors C3 Presents – which put on prominent festivals such as Bonnaroo and Lollapalooza. The city council is expected to vote on the $3 million contract at Thursday’s meeting.
Related: Huntsville planning large-scale outdoor music festival in 2024, Mayor Tommy Battle says
When he made the announcement of a proposed music festival at his annual state of the city address last month, Mayor Tommy Battle said the first event would be next year. The contract for the council to approve, however, says the first “anticipated” event will be in 2025.
The festival, as Battle said, will take place at John Hunt Park over a Saturday and Sunday. The planned annual date is the last Saturday in September “or the weekend before Austin City Limits Music Festival of each year,” the contract said. The Austin music festival, also promoted by C3 Presents, is typically in early October.
The contract calls for festivals to be held at John Hunt Park in 2025, 2026 and 2027.
The contract also said the city of Huntsville and C3 expect capacity for the first festival to be at least 30,000.
“Because of the positive publicity and economic impact a music festival can have on a city, the city (of Huntsville) wishes to enter into this agreement with C3 for production of a music festival in the city,” a recital at the outset of the contract said.
No acts have been announced for the Huntsville festival. The contract said C3 will be responsible for determining all programming and talent selection.
“C3 will consult with the city on the genre of the festival, the name of the festival and the creative elements of the festival,” the contract said.
While C3 will be responsible for all costs of the festival, the city will provide $3 million for “loss allocation” as protection for the promotors over the first three years of the festival, according to the contract. The city will also provide police, fire and medical services at no cost to C3 and the city will not charge rent to the promotors for the use of John Hunt Park.
The city also commits, under terms of the contract, $450,000 over three years for marketing the festival.
In announcing plans for the festival, Battle said it’s expected to be a bigger event than the now-defunct Big Spring Jam that was last held in 2011 and will serve as another lure to attract a young workforce and a magnet to keep Huntsville’s workforce in the Rocket 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 following his speech last month. “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.’”