VIRGINIA BEACH — A music festival originally scheduled during the same weekend as the Boardwalk Art Show at the Oceanfront has been pushed back a week after people expressed concerns about the two events clashing.
Audacy, one of the nation’s largest radio companies and owner of several local radio stations, will hold a two-day pop/rock music festival Oct. 27 and 28 on a beachfront stage at 31st Street, according to the city. It will be the same weekend as the Wicked 10k, a Halloween running race and party, also held at the Oceanfront.
The performers have not yet been announced.
“We did move it off Boardwalk Art Show weekend, identifying that since we also didn’t have the lineup concrete, we wanted to make sure, just in case the lineup was something that didn’t match up with the Boardwalk Art Show,” Bill Kelly, the city’s assistant resort administrator told members of the Resort Advisory Commission Thursday. “We wanted to put it on a weekend that would match up with Wicked.”
The stage will be just north of the King Neptune statue on 31st Street, and it will face north.
“That’s entirely new to give some love up to that end,” Kelly said.
The city has hosted multiple festivals this year, including several new ones, with the bulk of them at the south end of the resort area beach. Some residents and visitors have complained to city leaders about “festival fatigue” and the imposition resulting from sections of the beach and Boardwalk being closed to the public.
After Audacy’s fall music festival was announced last month, supporters of the Boardwalk Art Show, which will be held Oct. 20-22, aired concerns at a City Council meeting, saying that if both events were held on the same weekend, artists’ ability to access their tents could be compromised.
The council approved a $750,000 sponsorship for the festival in exchange for radio advertisements that will promote Virginia Beach as a tourist destination, with the stipulation that the event promotor work with the city to find a suitable date and location.
Stacy Parker, 757-222-5125, stacy.parker@pilotonline.com
