The Future of Music Festivals in St. Louis

A little over a month since Bluesweek annouced a move and only days after the announcement that the annual Budweiser Taste of St. Louis food event would be moving from St. Louis to Chesterfield for 2014, two potential new music festivals are being told "thanks but no" by some locals. St. Louis blues musician Jeremy Segel-Moss started an online petition to stop (or at least get better terms for locals) a move by Summer Rocks, the entity owned by Los Angeles-based talent agency ICM, from bringing top-tier music festivals to downtown St. Louis on Memorial Day and Labor Day weekends.

In favor of the new festivals, the 63-page Festival Bill 328, applauded by developer Steve Stogel, Alderman Phyllis Young and Aldermanic President Lewis Reed, was to be voted on last week by the Board of Aldermen’s Convention, Tourism, Arts & Humanities committee but due to the need for further discussion, the vote was pushed back for a week. If passed, the bill would give ICM a 20-year contract to produce "world-class outdoor high-quality music festivals" in the area around Soldiers Memorial. Each festival would bring in a flat $400,000 for city services and up to $1.5 million per festival in ticket sales for the first 10 years.

While that seems like a good deal all the way around, Segel-Moss and others worried how it would effect the local music community. "It seems so incomprehensibly against what was already doing very well here," is how he explained it to The St. Louis Post-Dispatch.Specifically at issue? A noncompete clause, and what he called the bill’s "lack of consideration to St. Louis’ culture" and the "failure to reach out to local companies such as Entertainment St. Louis or Live Nation, which operates Verizon Wireless Amphitheater."

His thoughts and the nearly 2000 signatures on the petition didn't matter in the end. Yesterday, after three hours of questions and public comment, the city Board of Aldermen’s convention and tourism committee gave 8-0 approval to Festival Bill 328. Now the bill will move for a final vote in front of the full Board of Aldermen, where it appears to have significant support. Lewis Reed, who is president of the board, said a final vote wasn’t expected until April as the Aldermen are going on spring recess after this week. He said that, for now, he saw no pressing need to call a special vote.