By EMILY PREVITI Staff Writer |
http://www.pressofatlanticcity.com/c...871e3ce6c.html
ATLANTIC CITY — City Council on Wednesday tabled a resolution that would allow the promoter of this year’s Dave Matthews Band Caravan to host a total of four weekend music festivals at Bader Field in 2012.
“It’s not good business — I find it insulting we’re going to be paid just $40,000 (daily),” Atlantic City Councilman Frank Gilliam said of the proposed rate schedule in a draft contract given to him and the rest of the governing body just before the start of Wednesday’s meeting. “Tickets sold for $200 last year, and you can’t give us $1 a ticket? We have to wait until we get to the 20,000 mark before we get $1? Is this a partnership?”
Gilliam and his fellow councilmen, including Mo Delgado and Steven Moore, grilled local attorney Joe Dougherty, who is representing promoter Starr Hill Presents.
In addition to the suggested fees, council members took exception to the potential for the events to obstruct other shows at Bader Field during the summer months because the setup and breakdown of stages, vendor tents and other equipment is so extensive.
“These questions go to the heart of our relationship with Starr Hill,” Moore said.
If approved, the resolution tabled Wednesday would have licensed Starr Hill to host festivals Sept. 22 and 23 and Sept. 29 and 30 at Bader Field, a 142-acre former municipal airport off Route 40 in the city’s Chelsea Heights section that deteriorated and became overgrown with weeds after the runways closed in 2006.
Earlier this month, the governing body approved festivals for June 15-17 and June 24-25. Gilliam said later the first licensing agreement simply blocked off dates and was not attached to a detailed contract.
“Starr Hill … (hosting festivals) in June and September gives (the promoter), in my opinion, opening and closing of the season. That’s an exclusivity,” Gilliam said.
The agreement called for the company to pay the city $80,000 per day: a $30,000 rental fee and $50,000 to cover costs to pay the extra city police officers, firefighters, emergency medical personnel and other staff needed to handle crowds at the events.
Gilliam’s concern is more about the ticket-based portion of the payment. He said he wants $1 per ticket — not $1 for every ticket sold above 20,000, the low end of the estimated actual attendance last year on each of the DMB Caravan’s three days.
That figure is drastically lower than the number first put forth nearly one year ago, when Mayor Lorenzo Langford announced the event, Gliliam said.
Caravan attendance estimates have not yet been confirmed to Gilliam, nor to other councilmen, by the box office report.
“That’s something we’d like to see,” he said after the meeting ended.
The Press of Atlantic City also has sought the records since the June festival. The city told The Press in September that the box office report still had not arrived, delays attributed at the time to continued touring by Starr Hill’s venue management director, Ken MacDonald. But MacDonald said this week the reports had been supplied to the city, and Solicitor Bruce Ward said Wednesday he has the report but was unable to find it before that night’s meeting.
Dave Matthews will not be back on any of the dates proposed so far, MacDonald said.
He said the company has not confirmed the headliners and would neither confirm or deny whether Phish would be among them. He would only say that the jam band will tour next summer and that Starr Hill hopes to offer a wider variety of musical genres — the Caravan stop in June focused mainly on alternative rock — during summer 2012.
Starr Hill parent company Red Light Management handled Phish’s sold-out, three-day concert at Boardwalk Hall during Halloween weekend in 2010. Delgado said he has heard the historic venue fetches a substantially higher rental fee, something no one at the meeting could verify.
Dougherty said Starr Hill and others running events at Bader Field have to build stages.
“It’s an empty field,” Delgado said. “There are no limits on what we can do.”
The resolution will be reconsidered by City Council at its Jan. 4 meeting.